nioemttj  of 
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The  Social  Application 
of  Religion 


<By 


CHARLES  STELZLE,  JANE  ADDAMS, 

CHARLES  P.  NEILL,  GRAHAM 

TAYLOR,  AND  GEORGE 

P.  ECKMAN 


THE  MERRICK  LECTURES  FOR  1907-8 

Delivered  at  Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  Dela- 
ware, Ohio,  April  5-9,  1908 


V»**^*v 

Of 


UNIVERSITY 


:?N\A 


CINCINNATI  :   JENNINGS  AND  GRAHAM 
NEW   YORK:     EATON   AND    MAINS 


8PRECKEL8 


COPYRIGHT,  1908, 
BY  JENNINGS  AND  GBAHAM 


THE  MERRICK  LECTURES 


BY  the  gift  of  the  late  Frederick  Merrick, 
M.  D.,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  for  fifty-one  years  a  member 
of  the  Faculty,  and  for  thirteen  of  those  years  Presi- 
dent of  Ohio  Wesleyan  University,  a  fund  was  estab- 
lished providing  an  annual  income  for  the  purpose 
of  securing  lectures  within  the  general  field  of  Ex- 
perimental and  Practical  Keligion.  ..  The  following 
courses  have  previously  been  given  on  this  foun- 
dation : 

Daniel  Curry,  D.  D.—  "Christian  Education." 

President  James  McCosh,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.—  -"Tests 
of  the  Various  Kinds  of  Truth." 

Bishop  Randolph  S.  Foster,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.—  "The 
Philosophy  of  Christian  Experience." 

Professor  James  Stalker,  D.  D.—  "The  Preacher 
and  His  Models." 

John  W.  Butler,  D.  D.—  "Mission  Work  in 
Mexico." 

Professor  George  Adam  Smith,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.  — 
"Christ  in  the  Old  Testament." 

Bishop  James  W.  Bashford,  Ph.  D.,  D.  D., 
LL.  D.—  "The  Science  of  Keligion." 

3 

190893 


4  The  Merrick  Lectures 

James  M.  Buckley,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.— "The  Nat- 
ural and  Spiritual  Orders  and  Their  Relations." 

John  E.  Mott,  M.  A.,  F.  R.  G.  S.— "The  Pastor 
and  Modern  Missions." 

Bishop  Elijah  E.  Hoss,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. ;  Professor 
Doremus  A.  Hayes,  Ph.  D.,  S.  T.  D.,  LL.  D.; 
Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. ;  Bishop  William 
F.  McDowell,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.;  Bishop  Edwin  H. 
Hughes,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.— "The  'New  Age  and  Its 
Creed." 

Robert  E.  Speer,  M.  A.— "The  Marks  of  a  Man; 
or,  The  Essentials  of  Christian  Character." 


INTRODUCTION 


No  OTHER  series  of  the  Merrick  Lectures  ever 
attracted  so  large  audiences  as  the  lectures  now  pub- 
lished— the  twelfth  course  on  this  foundation. 

In  great  part  this  was  due  to  the  fame  of  the 
speakers.  Most  of  them  are  of  more  than  national 
reputation.  Their  commanding  personalities,  their 
varied  talents,  their  wide  experience,  and  their  emi- 
nent usefulness  in  differing  positions  inevitably  drew 
large  numbers,  anxious  to  hear  people  who  had  done 
things  tell  what  things  ought  to  be  done — and  why. 
Though  the  lecturers  represent  several  religious  de- 
nominations, and  have  been  looking  at  different  as- 
pects of  the  social  situation,  and  gave  their  addresses 
without  previous  consultation  with  one  another,  the 
general  agreement  of  their  views  is  striking. 

In  part  also,  the  interest  in  the  lectures  arose, 
as  I  believe,  from  the  topics  which  they  discussed. 
There  is  a  genuine  social  awakening — a  deepening, 
if  not  new,  sense  of  universal  responsibility — which 
has  shown  itself  in  philanthropy,  in  political  reform, 
in  vigorous  discussion  of  family  problems  and  com- 
mercial morality,  in  ardent  and  not  unsuccessful  ef- 
forts for  industrial  and  social  betterment.  The  cru- 


6  Introduction 

sade  of  our  day,  which  kindles  the  noblest  ambitions 
of  many  high  souls,  is  a  social  crusade.  Knowledge 
of  surrounding  needs,  clearer  than  ever  before;  the 
humanizing  of  religion,  the  exaltation  of  Jesus  as 
Teacher  and  Example, — all  have  tended  to  enlarge 
the  ranks  of  social  workers,  to  put  Christian  com- 
passion into  practice. 

For  this  awakening,  no  doubt,  the  Church  is 
largely  responsible.  Certain  it  is  that,  for  her  own 
sake  and  for  the  work's  sake,  she  must  be  closely 
identified  with  it.  The  age  will  suffer,  civilization 
will  languish,  if  evangelism  and  social  service,  which 
are  but  parts  of  one  enterprise,  should  be  brought  into 
opposition  or  should  even  be  separated.  The  Church, 
if  she  is  to  retain  the  confidence  of  the  people,  must 
be  the  servant  of  the  people  with  their  multitudinous 
needs.  She  must  not  only  preach  love,  but  prove 
love  by  a  service  that  seeks  no  return.  She  must 
not  only  preach  courage,  but  be  bold  in  her  attitude 
toward  those  who  are  strong  and  cruel.  She  must 
offer  faith,  and  she  must  also  have  faith  enough  to 
stake  her  very  existence  on  the  ultimate  triumph 
and  the  present  supremacy  of  righteousness  and 
peace.  If  the  wreck  of  our  civilization  is  to  be 
averted,  the  Church  must  be  the  champion  of  the 
weak. 

Likewise,  for  greatest  sanity,  efficiency,  and  per- 
manence of  results,  the  self-sacrificing  social  workers 
of  our  day  should  be  living  and  laboring  under  the 
restraints  and  guidance  and  inspirations  of  religion. 


Introduction  7 

Some  are  in  religious  perplexity.  Their  very  service 
of  love  should  bring  fuller  knowledge  of  divine 
things.  In  the  following  of  Christ,  they  may  learn 
more  of  the  pre-eminence  of  the  Lord  and  Savior 
of  men.  Willing  to  do  His  will,  they  may  know 
of  the  doctrine. 

In  Jesus  Christ  is  the  hope  of  society  as  well 
as  of  individuals.  Those  who  worship  Him  and  those 
who  serve  Him  should  be  at  one  to  put  Him  on  the 
world's  throne. 

As  the  Church  wisely  joins  herself  with  all  who 
seek  to  make  this  earth  a  better  dwelling  for  the 
children  of  God,  she  will  not  lose  evangelistic  fervor, 
forget  her  missionary  responsibilities,  or  neglect  her 
educational  institutions.  All,  in  happy  harmony, 
shall  evidence  the  breadth  of  her  mission  and  the 
sincerity  of  her  love. 

HERBERT  WELCH. 

Ohio  Wesleyan  University. 


CONTENTS 


PAGK 

INTRODUCTION,  5 

I.  THE  SPIBIT  OF  SOCIAL  UNREST,    -  11 

Rev.  Charles  Stelzle. 

IL-  WOMAN'S  CONSCIENCE  AND  SOCIAL  AMEL- 

>.  .*•-. 

IOEATION,  »"•  -        39 

Miss  Jane  Addams. 

III.  SOME    ETHICAL   ASPECTS   OF  THE   LABOR 

MOVEMENT,  *  -  61 

Commissioner  Charles  Patrick  Neill. 

V-  "' 

IV.  INDUSTRY  AND  RELIGION  :  THEIR  GOMMON 

^•ORO'UND  AND  INTERJ^PE'NDENCE,  -        -      87 
Professo/^Graham   Taylor. 

V.  CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL  SITUATION,    105 

Rev.  George  Peck  Eckman. 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  SOCIAL  UNEEST 

CHARLES  STELZLE, 

Superintendent  of  the  Departments  of  Church  and  Labor 
and  of  Immigration  of  the  Board  of  Home  Mis- 
sions of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the 
United  States  of  America. 


OF  TNI 
UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE  SPIEIT  OF  SOCIAL  UKREST 

TWENTY-FIVE  years  ago  a  famous  French  states- 
man said,  "The  social  question  is  a  fad  upon  which 
serious  statesmen  should  waste  no  time."  To-day  no 
thinking  man  will  deny  that  it  is  the  most  im- 
portant question  that  confronts  us.  This  is  true 
largely  because  our  leaders  in  Church  and  school 
and  State  have  persistently  closed  their  eyes  to  the 
signs  of  the  times.  The  awakening  interest  in  re- 
cent years  has  come  none  too  soon.  For  already  the 
horizon  is  dark  with  clouds  of  social  unrest  which 
may  distill  into  blessed  showers  or  break  upon  us  in 
a  storm  of  fury. 

Nowhere  is  this  truer  than  in  our  great  centers 
of  population.  Like  a  great  whirlpool,  the  city  draws 
unto  itself  the  elements  which  constitute  the  social 
unrest.  The  growth  of  the  city  is  one  of  the  won- 
ders of  modern  times.  We  are  accustomed  to  speak 
of  the  growth  of  cities  only  in  connection  with  the 
development  of  our  own  new  country,  but  this  is 
a  world  phenomenon.  The  same  elements  which 
make  the  city  here  make  it  across  the  sea.  The 
city  is  the  product  of  the  newer  civilization.  It  is 

13 


14  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

the  outgrowth  of  modern  economic  and  social  con- 
ditions from  which  there  is  no  turning  back.  There- 
fore the  city  will  unquestionably  dominate  the  na- 
tion. Whereas  in  1800  only  four  per  cent  of  the 
population  of  the  United  States  lived  in  the  city, 
to-day  thirty-four  per  cent  live  in  the  town.  Whereas 
in  1800  there  were  only  six  cities  with  a  population 
of  8,000  in  America,  to-day  there  are  six  hundred 
such  cities.  In  these  cities  there  are  found  more 
than  twenty-five  million  people.  From  1890  to  1900 
the  total  increase  of  population  in  the  United  States 
was  twenty  per  cent.  But  during  the  same  period 
the  population  of  the  cities  increased  thirty-seven 
per  cent. 

The  factors  which  are  developing  the  city  will 
never  disappear.  The  introduction  of  labor-saving 
machinery  multiplies  the  efficiency  of  those  who  re- 
main on  the  farm,  but  it  fails  to  increase  the  eating 
capacity  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  It  is  quite  evi- 
dent that  with  the  decreased  demand  for  manual 
labor  on  account  of  the  use  of  machinery,  the  farmer 
is  driven  to  the  city  where  he  can  find  employment 
in  shops  where  not  only  agricultural  implements  are 
turned  out,  but  every  other  conceivable  object,  for 
which  the  demands  are  almost  unlimited.  Notwith- 
standing the  attempts  of  well-intentioned  philan- 
thropists to  induce  immigrants  and  other  classes  to 
move  onto  the  land,  these  immigrants  and  working 
people  persist  in  remaining  in  the  city,  not  only 
for  the  reasons  already  given,  but  because  while 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  15 

the  country-bred  man  driven  into  the  city  finds  it 
comparatively  easy  to  adapt  himself  to  city  life,  the 
city-bred  man  rarely  adjusts  himself  to  the  ways 
of  the  country.  Those  who  do  go  to  the  country 
are  the  ones  who  are  comparatively  free  from  the 
very  thing  that  seems  to  make  this  step  necessary. 
With  the  rapidly  developing  transportation  facilities, 
the  business  man  who  makes  his  money  in  the  city 
can  easily  make  his  home  in  the  suburb.  And 
usually  he  assumes  no  responsibility  for  the  city's 
civic  and  religious  life,  often  leaving  it  in  the  hands 
of  the  most  unfit.  Because  of  these  changing  con- 
ditions, and  because  in  the  cities  are  found  every 
element  which  has  tested  the  strength  and  the 
virility  of  the  Church,  and  in  some  instances  de- 
stroyed the  very  life  of  government  which  had  given 
promise  of  permanence,  it  is  not  difficult  to  under- 
stand that  we  are  facing  forces  which  challenge 
us  for  supremacy  in  the  great  storm  centers  of  popu- 
lation. 

Furthermore,  I  would  remind  you  that  the  city 
is  peculiarly  an  industrial  problem.  The  economic 
interpretation  of  history  seems  to  explain  the  long 
series  of  events  which  have  followed  one  another  in 
the  development  of  mankind.  Other  influences  there 
have  been  which  can  not  be  catalogued  under  this 
study,  but  nevertheless  the  fundamental  basis  of  the 
development  has  been  economic  and  industrial.  It 
has  been  pointed  out  that  the  life  of  primitive  man 
was  largely  determined  by  certain  economic  factors 


16  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

— the  discovery  of  fire,  the  invention  of  pottery,  the 
domestication  of  animals,  and  the  use  of  tools.  We 
assign  industrial  names  to  the  ages,  as,  the  age  of 
stone,  the  age  of  brass,  the  age  of  bronze,  and  the 
age  of  iron.  We  talk  of  the  hunting  and  fishing, 
the  pastoral  and  agricultural,  the  commercial  and 
industrial  stages  of  civilization.  The  early  migra- 
tions, the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  awakening  of  na- 
tions, the  American  and  French  Revolutions,  and 
most  of  the  wars  of  history  were  largely  due  to 
economic  causes.  There  is  to-day  no  great  politica1 
question  before  the  American  people  which  is  free 
from  the  economic  factor.  Nearly  every  law  passed 
by  the  legislature,  and  nearly  every  governmental 
enterprise,  has  its  economic  aspect,  if  indeed  it  is 
not  altogether  economic  in  its  nature. 

But  it  is  the  human  element  in  the  city's  life 
which  must  chiefly  concern  us.  The  filthy  slum,  the 
dark  tenement,  the  unsanitary  factory,  the  long  hours 
of  toil,  the  lack  of  a  living  wage,  the  back-breaking 
labor,  the  inability  to  pay  doctors'  bills  in  times  of 
sickness,  the  poor  and  insufficient  food,  the  lack  of 
leisure,  the  swift  approach  of  old  age,  the  dismal 
future, — these  weigh  down  the  hearts  and  lives  of 
multitudes  in  our  cities.  Many  have  almost  for- 
gotten how  to  smile.  To  laugh  is  a  lost  art.  The 
look  of  care  has  come  so  often  and  for  so  long  a 
period  at  a  time  that  it  is  now  forever  stamped  upon 
their  faces.  The  lines  are  deep  and  hard ;  their  souls 
— their  ethical  souls — are  all  but  lost.  No  hell  in 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  17 

the  future  can  be  worse  to  them  than  the  hell  in 
which  they  now  live.  They  fear  death  less  than 
they  fear  sleep.  Some  indeed  long  for  the  summons, 
daring  not  to  take  their  own  lives. 

To  such  what  does  it  matter  whether  the  doors 
of  the  Church  are  closed  or  open  ?  What  attraction 
has  the  flowery  sermon  or  the  polished  oration? 
What  meaning  have  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the 
brotherhood  of  man  ?  Where  is  God  ?  they  ask ;  and 
What  cares  man?  they  say.  It  is  in  meeting  the 
i  needs  of  these  that  the  Church  will  be  severely  tested 
in  coming  days. 

Closely  allied  to  this  element  of  city  life  is  the 
problem  and  challenge  of  the  immigrant.  He  is 
coming  at  the  rate  of  a  million  a  year.  Always  will 
he  continue  to  be  amongst  us.  True  enough,  many 
of  them  are  going  back  in  these  days  of  business 
depression,  but  they  are  going  back  as  missionaries 
to  tell  of  the  glories  of  this  great  country,  and  every 
one  that  has  gone  back  will  bring  a  dozen  with  him. 
So  long  as  there  is  a  pull  on  this  side  of  the  ocean 
and  a  push  on  the  other,  and  the  push  is  constantly 
becoming  harder,  millions  of  foreigners,  with  their 
distorted  views  of  government,  will  continue  to  come. 
To  many  of  these  the  word  government  means  op- 
pression. They  land  on  the  American  shore  with  a 
hatred  and  malice  in  their  hearts  which  only  too 
frequently  finds  expression  in  the  use  of  the  pistol 
and  bomb.  Anyway,  this  swelling  tide  of  immigra- 
2 


18  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

tion  adds  greatly  to  the  spirit  of  social  unrest  in 
our  country. 

The  problem  of  the  immigrant  is  peculiarly  an 
American  one.  Only  about  eight  per  cent  of  the 
population  of  Paris  are  foreign  born.  London  has 
less  than  three  per  cent  foreign  born.  But,  accord- 
ing to  the  census  of  the  United  States  in  1900,  the 
one  hundred  and  sixty  cities  having  at  least  twenty- 
five  thousand  inhabitants  have  a  foreign  born  popu- 
lation of  more  than  twenty-six  per  cent.  It  is  worthy 
of  attention  that  the  six  cities  having  the  largest  per- 
centage of  foreign  born  inhabitants  are  in  Massachu- 
setts. Fall  Kiver  has  forty-seven  per  cent ;  Lawrence, 
forty-five  per  cent;  Lowell,  forty-three  per  cent; 
Holyoke,  forty-one  per  cent,  foreign  born.  These 
New  England  cities  exceed  Chicago  with  its  thirty- 
four  per  cent,  and  New  York  with  its  thirty-five 
per  cent.  In  history  the  immigrant  has  conquered 
nations ;  not  always  by  force  of  arms,  but  by  method 
of  life  or  by  force  of  character.  Sometimes  for 
good;  often  for  ill.  The  average  immigrant  will 
make  a  good  citizen  if  the  American  will  show  him 
how.  And  the  American  citizen  has  more  to  do  with 
the  solution  of  the  problem  than  has  the  immigrant 
himself. 

Another  element  which  must  be  included  in  the 
discussion  of  this  subject  is  organized  labor.  Affili- 
ated with  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  there 
are  one  hundred  and  seventeen  international  organi- 
zations, thirty-nine  State  organizations,  five  hundred 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  19 

and  eighty-five  central  labor  unions,  composed  of  the 
labor  unions  of  particular  cities  and  counties,  and 
twenty-eight  thousand  local  organizations.  Add  to 
these  the  great  railroad  brotherhoods,  the  Industrial 
Workers  of  the  World,  and  still  other  smaller  or- 
ganizations, and  you  have  a  total  of  three  and  one- 
half  millions.  It  has  been  said  that  the  working- 
men  in  the  labor  organizations  represent  but  a  small 
part  of  the  great  mass  of  toilers.  The  census  of 
1900  tells  us  there  were  in  this  country  at  that  time 
twenty-nine  million  persons  engaged  in  gainful  oc- 
cupations. But  we  must  eliminate  from  our  calcu- 
lation the  ten  million  farmers  who  are  unorganizable. 
We  must  eliminate  nearly  all  of  the  six  million  per- 
sons in  social  and  domestic  service  who  are  not  yet 
in  labor  unions,  fortunately  or  otherwise.  We  must 
eliminate  the  million  and  a  quarter  persons  in  pro- 
fessional practice.  All  of  these  are  unorganizable 
and  should  be  excluded  from  the  comparison.  Elimi- 
nate also  large  numbers  of  the  nearly  five  millions 
in  trades  and  transportation,  which  includes  bankers 
and  brokers,  the  officials  of  banks  and  corporations, 
bookkeepers,  overseers,  hucksters,  stenographers,  ped- 
dlers, undertakers,  and  a  long  list  of  people  who  can 
not  be  organized  into  labor  unions.  After  you  have 
taken  out  these,  you  have  just  about  seven  millions 
left.  Probably  one-half  of  them  are  living  in  small 
towns  where  there  are  no  labor  unions,  or  else  they 
are  engaged  in  occupations  which  have  not  yet  been 
or  can  not  be  organized.  So  that  practically  the 


20  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

three  and  one-half  millions  in  the  labor  unions  really 
represent  the  great  mass  of  artisans  and  laborers  in 
our  country.  And  when  they  speak,  they  speak  of- 
ficially for  the  working  people  of  the  United  States. 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  the  farmers  were  not 
yet  included  in  the  ranks  of  organized  labor.  It 
was  most  interesting,  during  the  last  two  conventions 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  to  witness  that 
strong  group  of  men  representing  a  newly  organized 
farmers'  society  which  threatens  to  sweep  the  entire 
country.  These  dozen  men  asked  to  be  received  as 
delegates  to  the  American  Federation  of  Labor. 
They  pledged  their  organization  to  a  hearty  co-opera- 
tion in  the  things  for  which  organized  labor  stands. 
If  a  complete  union  between  these  organizations  is 
consummated,  it  will  mean  the  practical  co-operation 
of  the  wage-earning  and  agricultural  interests  of  the 
United  States,  and  if  this  should  ever  take  place  it 
will  undoubtedly  very  radically  affect  the  social  and 
economic  conditions  of  the  masses. 

But,  more  significant  than  any  other  element  in 
the  discussion  of  this  subject  is  that  of  Socialism. 
There  are  to-day  twenty-five  million  Socialists 
throughout  the  world;  as  many  people  as  there  are 
in  every  city  of  the  United  States  with  a  popula- 
tion of  eight  thousand  and  over.  Eight  millions  of 
them  have  already  cast  their  ballots  for  Socialist 
candidates. 

Last  August,  in  the  city  of  Stuttgart,  Germany, 
the  Socialists  held  their  international  congress,  with 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  21 

eight  hundred  and  eighty-six  delegates  coming  from 
twenty-five  different  countries.  On  the  first  Sunday 
afternoon  of  that  great  convention  they  had  a  mass- 
meeting  of  one  hundred  thousand  working-people  in 
the  Plaza  of  Stuttgart.  From  the  surrounding  towns 
and  from  Stuttgart  itself,  there  came  never-ending 
processions  of  Socialists,  until  they  surrounded  the 
six  stands  from  which  the  speakers  gave  their  ad- 
dresses. The  police,  sent  out  to  quell  riots,  were 
engaged  simply  in  ministering  to  those  who  had 
fainted  by  the  wayside  on  account  of  the  oppressive- 
ness of  the  day.  It  seemed  very  much  like  the  day 
of  Pentecost,  as  those  half-dozen  men  spoke  in  dif- 
ferent languages.  Sometimes  those  gathered  before 
them  were  unable  to  understand  the  words  which 
they  were  speaking,  but  they  could  catch  the  spirit 
which  was  back  of  them,  and  they  were  thrilled  by 
the  messages  which  meant  so  much  to  them, — this 
great  human  brotherhood  of  Socialists,"  which  is  mak- 
ing such  tremendous  progress  throughout  the  entire 
world. 

If  the  Socialists  in  our  own  country  increase  in 
the  same  ratio  during  the  next  eight  years  as  they 
increased  during  the  four  years  preceding  the  last 
Presidential  election,  they  will  elect  a  President  of 
the  United  States.  Some  time  ago  I  was  talking  in 
a  Western  college.  I  invited  questions  from  the 
audience.  The  most  pointed  questions  that  were  put 
at  me  were  asked  by  a  young  woman  in  the  rear  of 
the  crowd.  Afterward  she  came  forward  and  told  me 


22  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

something  about  herself.  She  was  a  Jewess,  and  a 
Socialist;  she  came  from  a  sweatshop  in  Chicago  to 
get  a  four  years'  training.  She  was  going  back  to 
Chicago  to  her  sweatshop  people,  an  educated  Social- 
ist, to  tell  them  that  in  Socialism  and  in  Socialism 
alone  was  their  salvation. 

The  literature  of  the  Socialists  far  surpasses  the 
literature  of  the  Church.  There  are  to-day  fifty 
weekly  and  monthly  Socialist  papers  published  in 
this  country,  and  one  daily  printed  in  Chicago. 
There  is  in  one  of  our  Western  States  a  weekly  which 
has  a  circulation  of  three  hundred  thousand  copies, 
and  upon  occasion  they  will  get  out  three  million 
copies.  Besides  these  periodicals,  they  get  out  tons 
upon  tons  of  other  literature.  Nearly  all  of  it  ap- 
peals to  the  common  man,  the  workingman,  because 
it  is  written  in  the  language  of  the  people.  Some 
time  ago  I  spoke  to  a  Socialist  leader  in  one  of  our 
Western  cities — a  city  with  a  population  of  three 
hundred  thousand,  where  at  the  last  election  they 
nearly  elected  a  Socialist  mayor.  They  did  elect 
twelve  Socialist  aldermen.  I  said  to  him,  "How  is 
it  that  you  Socialists  are  so  successful?"  He  re- 
plied: "We  put  nine-tenths  of  our  campaign  funds 
into  literature.  We  have  three  hundred  men,  Social- 
ists, each  of  whom  has  become  responsible  for  a  par- 
ticular section  of  the  city.  They  are  pledged  to 
get  up  every  Sunday  morning  at  five  o'clock,  summer 
and  winter,  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  rounds 
of  their  sections  with  literature  printed  in  different 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  23 

languages,  which  is  inserted  in  the  newspapers  found 
upon  the  front  porches."  Imagine,  if  you  can,  in 
Chicago  or  New  York,  in  Detroit,  Philadelphia,  or 
in  any  other  American  city,  three  hundred  Christian 
men  pledged  to  get  up  every  Sunday  morning  at 
five  o'clock  to  go  the  rounds  of  particular  districts 
for  the  purpose  of  putting  Christian  literature  into 
the  Sunday  morning  newspaper  or  under  the  door- 
step of  the  working-people  in  their  community,  be- 
cause they  felt  that  the  message  of  Christianity  was 
far  more  important  than  the  message  of  Socialism. 
I  can  not  conceive  of  them  doing  it;  can  you?  I 
confess  that  I  am  not  doing  it.  I  am  not  asking 
you  to  do  it.  I  am  telling  you  how  it  is  that  the 
Socialists  of  the  world  are  making  the  progress  that 
they  are  making  to-day.  They  have  training-schools 
in  several  cities  of  our  country,  from  which  they  are 
sending  out  finished  propagandists;  men  and  women 
who  have  been  trained  in  every  phase  of  Socialism — 
Socialism  in  art,  Socialism  in  literature,  Socialism 
in  history.  They  talk  with  authority.  They  can 
give  a  reason  for  the  hope  that  is  within  them.  And 
when  you  tell  the  common  people  that  Socialism  is 
an  awful  thing,  you  must  be  prepared  to  tell  them 
why  it  is  an  awful  thing. 

In  some  of  our  Western  cities  they  have  regular 
preaching  services  on  Sunday.  They  have  district 
Sunday-schools.  They  have  open-air  meetings.  Last 
year  my  friend,  Dr.  Ely,  who  had  charge  of  the  open- 
air  meetings  of  the  Churches  of  Greater  New  York, 


24  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

sent  me  a  list  of  the  open-air  meetings  to  be  con- 
ducted by  these  Churches  during  a  particular  week. 
I  happened  to  have  on  my  desk  a  copy  of  the  Worker, 
the  Socialist  paper  of  New  York  City,  which  con- 
tained a  list  of  the  Socialist  open-air  meetings  to 
be  held  during  the  same  week.  I  ran  a  pencil  mark 
around  this  list  of  meetings  and  sent  the  paper  to 
Ely.  For  every  open-air  meeting  conducted  by  the 
Churches  these  Socialists  were  to  conduct  fifteen,  and 
yet  these  nearly  one  thousand  Protestant  Churches 
thought  they  were  doing  a  magnificent  work  in  bring- 
ing the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  masses  of  the 
people  who  were  hearing  about  Socialism. 

I  am  not  a  Socialist.  It  does  not  appeal  to  me, 
either  as  an  economic  or  as  a  social  system.  Never- 
theless there  are  some  things  about  this  question  which 
it  seems  to  me  we  must  frankly  face  and  confess. 
What  should  be  the  attitude  of  the  Church  toward 
Socialism?  First  of  all,  we  must  recognize  the  fact 
that  a  man  has  a  perfect  right  to  be  a  Socialist  if 
he  so  desires.  If  he  is  convinced  that  Socialism  is 
morally  and  economically  sound,  he  has  a  perfect 
right  to  be  a  Socialist  in  this  country.  In  the 
second  place,  we  must  recognize  that  it  is  quite  pos- 
sible for  a  man  to  be  a  Socialist  and  a  Christian,  too. 
I  have  no  sympathy  with  the  statement  that  a  Social- 
ist can  not  be  a  Christian.  He  can,  and  there  are 
many  of  them.  Furthermore,  we  must  show  the 
workingmen  of  this  country  that  the  Church  of  Jesus 
Christ  does  not  stand  for  the  present  social  system. 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  25 

It  does  not  uphold  it.  It  stands  for  only  so  much 
of  it  as  is  in  accordance  with  the  principles  laid 
down  by  Jesus.  We  have  not  quite  reached  that 
ideal.  Again,  we  must  show  workingmen  that  the 
Church  does  not  offer  them  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  as 
a  mere  sop,  or  because  we  are  afraid  that  some  day 
they  may  bring  on  a  revolution.  We  must  show 
them  that  we  are  offering  them  the  same  Gospel, 
with  all  of  its  privileges  and  obligations,  that  we  are 
offering  to  their  employers. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the  elements  which  con- 
front us  and  which  challenge  the  Church  of  the 
twentieth  century.  To  make  you  understand  more 
fully  our  position  in  this  matter,  I  desire  to  call 
your  attention  briefly  to  four  important  facts. 

First,  the  Church  is  slowly  but  surely  losing 
ground  in  the  great  centers  of  population.  Nearly 
every  city  in  America  is  witnessing  the  removal  of 
its  Churches  from  the  densely  populated  sections, 
where  the  Church  is  most  needed,  and  this  in  the 
face  of  the  greatest  opportunity  that  has  ever  come 
to  the  Church  in  the  history  of  home  missions. 
Within  recent  years,  forty  Protestant  Churches 
moved  out  of  the  district  below  Twentieth  Street 
in  New  York  City,  while  three  hundred  thousand 
people  moved  in,  and  they  were  all  working-people. 
I  know  it  is  said  sometimes  that  the  people  in  the 
lower  end  of  New  York  are  all  foreigners.  I  lived 
there  too  long  to  be  fooled  by  that  statement.  But 
suppose  it  is  true.  Suppose  they  are  all  foreigners 


26  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

— these  three  hundred  thousand,  besides  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  who  were  there  before  they  came.  I 
heard  of  a  Church  that  sold  its  property  because  there 
were  too  many  foreigners  in  the  neighborhood;  then 
they  sent  the  money  to  the  Board  of  Foreign  Mis- 
sions. If  I  were  not  on  this  job — to  use  the  working- 
man's  expression — I  would  become  a  foreign  mis- 
sionary. I  believe  in  foreign  missions.  My  wife 
is  a  volunteer  to  the  foreign  field.  She  is  ready 
to  go.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  since  God,  in  His 
providence,  has  sent  the  foreigner  to  our  very  door, 
He  has  given  us  the  mission  of  evangelizing  him; 
and  it  will  be  only  as  the  Church  is  willing  to  lose 
her  life  that  she  will  find  it  again  among  the  masses 
of  the  people.  Now,  if  the  tendency  of  the  popula- 
tion is  toward  the  cities,  and  if  the  cities  are  to 
dominate  the  nation,  and  there  is  absolutely  no  ques- 
tion about  it,  it  does  not  require  a  prophet  or  the 
son  of  a  prophet  to  foretell  the  inevitable  result,  if 
this  failure  of  the  Church  in  meeting  the  city  prob- 
lem continues. 

Second,  underlying  the  spirit  of  social  unrest 
throughout  the  world  to-day  there  is  a  deeply  re- 
ligious spirit  among  the  masses  of  the  people.  In  the 
city  of  Brussels  the  Socialists  have  erected  a  people's 
palace.  In  one  of  the  halls  just  back  of  the  platform, 
and  behind  a  screen,  there  is  frescoed  upon  the  wall 
the  form  of  Jesus  Christ,  with  hand  uplifted.  It 
is  a  very  significant  thing  that  while  these  Socialists 
despise  the  Church,  they  have  the  greatest  respect 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  27 

for  its  Founder.  I  speak  on  nearly  every  Sunday 
afternoon  to  a  mass-meeting  of  workingmen  in  some 
American  city.  The  audience  rarely  numbers  less 
than  a  thousand;  often  there  are  two  or  three  thou- 
sand. Once  there  were  ten,  and  again  fifteen  thou- 
sand men.  As  I  have  talked  to  these  hard-headed 
American  artisans  concerning  the  supremacy  of  Jesus 
Christ  in  their  own  lives,  there  has  come  applause 
from  every  part  of  the  hall,  indicating  that  down  deep 
in  the  heart  of  the  common  people  there  is  a  pro- 
found respect  for  Jesus.  These  people  are  religious, 
even  though  that  religion  may  not  be  expressed  in 
an  orthodox  manner. 

Third,  God  is  not  dependent  upon  the  Church 
for  the  carrying  out  of  His  plans  for  the  redemption 
of  the  world.  I  was  very  much  struck  with  the  third 
verse  of  the  hymn  that  we  sang : 

"Yet  these  are  not  the  only  walls 

Wherein  Thou  mayest  be  sought, 

On  homeliest  work  Thy  blessing  falls 

In  truth  and  patience  wrought." 

Thus  far  the  Church  has  stood  the  test  of  time. 
Her  ideals  and  methods  have  been  so  far  above  every 
other  agency  that  she  has  surpassed  them  in  the  race 
for  supremacy.  But  at  no  time  in  her  history  has 
the  Church's  claim  to  be  the  truest  representative  of 
God  in  the  world  been  undisputed.  Other  religions 
and  other  institutions  have  insisted  that  they,  too, 
must  be  recognized  as  having  the  spirit  of  Jesus 


28  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

Christ.  The  pride  of  the  Jew  suffered  a  severe  shock 
when  he  was  told  that  the  miserable  Samaritan  was 
just  as  greatly  beloved  by  God  as  he  was.  It  re- 
quired a  distinct  revelation  from  heaven  to  convince 
even  large-hearted  Peter  that  "God  is  no  respecter 
of  persons,  but  he  that  feareth  Him  and  worketh 
righteousness  is  accepted  with  Him."  It  required  an 
Ecumenical  Conference,  as  we  are  told  about  it  in 
the  fifteenth  chapter  of  Acts,  to  show  the  early  mis- 
sionaries that  the  Gentiles  need  not  be  bound  by  cer- 
tain forms  and  ceremonies  which  were  practiced  by 
the  Christians  who  formed  the  Church  as  it  then 
existed.  Often  has  God  been  compelled  to  rebuke 
those  who  considered  themselves  the  elect  in  the 
matter  of  representing  Him  in  the  world.  Francis 
of  Assisi,  Savonarola,  Luther,  Wycliffe,  and  Knox, 
and  a  long  line  of  other  men,  were  compelled  to  with- 
stand those  whose  opposition  was  based  upon  a  nar- 
row conception  of  the  true  significance  and  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  the  kingdom  of  God.  It  was  when 
the  old  Church  of  England  seemed  to  be  getting  away 
from  the  common  people  that  God  raised  up  a  man 
out  of  that  Church  who  organized,  originally,  not  a 
Church,  but  a  company  of  men  and  women  who  have 
since  become  a  power  in  the  world.  And  the  only 
excuse  for  your  existence  as  a  Methodist  Church  is 
the  fact  that  you  went  out  among  the  common  people 
to  minister  to  them;  not  simply  to  minister  to  their 
spiritual  needs,  but  to  their  social  and  their  economic 
needs.  You  read  the  life  of  John  Wesley,  and  you 


f  Of  THt  A 

f  UNIVERSITY) 
\k^-         \*zS 

The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  29 

will  find  that  he  was  deeply  interested  in  the  every- 
day life  of  the  common  people. 

Furthermore,  the  Church  is  responsible  for  the 
spirit  of  social  unrest  which  exists  to-day.  And  she 
must  finish  the  task  which  she  has  begun.  Some 
one  recently  said  that  during  the  past  twenty-five 
years  social  unrest  has  increased  threefold.  During 
the  same  period,  he  goes  on  to  say,  the  Church  has 
increased  threefold.  Therefore,  he  concludes,  the 
message  and  method  of  the  Church  in  the  matter  of 
keeping  down  the  spirit  of  social  unrest  has  been 
absolutely  non-effective.  I  agree  with  this  statement, 
only  my  viewpoint  is  just  a  bit  different.  In  the 
first  place,  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  because 
there  is  to-day  three  times  as  much  social  unrest, 
therefore  social  conditions  are  three  times  as  de- 
plorable. Rather  is  the  opposite  true.  No  one  would 
think  of  saying  that  because  of  the  present  chaotic 
state  of  Russia  the  people  in  that  country  are 
in  a  worse  condition  than  when  the  tyranny  of  its 
rulers  was  accepted  without  any  manifestation  of 
opposition  on  their  part.  Russia  is  farther  along 
to-day  than  she  was  twenty-five  years  ago. 

I  would  point  out  to  you  that  there  are  no  labor 
troubles  in  darkest  Africa.  Curiously  enough,  the 
very  missionaries  that  you  are  sending  there  are  go- 
ing to  create  labor  troubles  and  develop  social  unrest. 
If  they  fail  to  do  it,  they  shall  be  untrue  to  the 
mission  and  the  commission  of  Jesus  Christ.  They 
will  point  out  to  these  people  their  low  ideals,  the 


30  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

low  physical  conditions  with  which  they  are  satisfied. 
Then  they  will  point  out  those  higher  ideals  which 
Jesus  Christ  has  presented  to  us,  and,  as  a  natural 
consequence,  the  great  mass  of  heathen  will  become 
dissatisfied,  and  then  there  will  be  created  among 
them  a  healthy  spirit  of  social  unrest.  Bands  will 
begin  to  break  as  they  have  broken  in  the  past,  and 
the  people  will  leap  forth  out  of  their  bonds  and 
claim  those  higher  and  better  things  that  Christ  in- 
tends they  should  have.  That  has  been  the  history 
of  the  Church.  The  Church  is  responsible  for  the 
social  unrest  of  this  twentieth  century.  She  has 
created  it.  That  has  been  her  business,  and  because 
this  is  true,  instead  of  denouncing  the  Church  for 
her  inability  to  keep  down  the  spirit  of  social  unrest, 
let  us  give  her  credit  for  having  done  the  job,  and  it 
is  a  mighty  good  one,  too.  Social  unrest  is  one  of 
the  most  hopeful  signs  of  the  times.  "Without  it 
there  can  be  no  real  progress. 

But  this  spirit  of  social  unrest  requires  intelli- 
gent and  unselfish  direction,  and  it  is  at  this  point 
that  the  Church  must  be  true  to  herself.  I  am  not 
at  all  bothered  about  the  spirit  of  social  unrest  in 
this  twentieth  century.  I  am  not  afraid  of  it.  But 
it  is  just  at  this  point  that  the  Church  is  going  to 
be  most  severely  tested.  Having  created  dissatisfac- 
tion among  the  people,  is  the  Church  now  to  step 
aside  and  permit  the  unprincipled  agitator  of  mate- 
rialism to  come  in  and  usurp  the  place  which  natu- 
rally belongs  to  her,  or  shall  the  Church  go  forward 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  31 

in  the  work  which  God  has  given  her  to  do,  bravely 
finishing  the  task  which  she  has  so  grandly  begun? 
That  is  the  problem  as  it  presents  itself  to  us  to-day. 

What  may  the  Church  do  in  answer  to  this  chal- 
lenge? First  of  all,  we  need  to  study  the  problems 
of  the  people  sympathetically.  When  our  young 
men  go  to  the  theological  seminary  to  study  for  the 
ministry,  they  study  about  the  social  life  of  the 
Canaanites,  the  Hittites,  the  Amorites,  the  Perizzites, 
the  Hivites,  and  the  Jebusites.  And  when  they  be- 
come our  ministers,  they  preach  about  these  very  in- 
teresting people  that  lived  so  long  time  ago,  and  we 
listen  to  them  with  very  great  pleasure — that  is,  some- 
times some  of  us  do.  But  when  a  man  studies  into 
the  social  life  of  the  people  that  live  in  Buffalo,  for 
example,  and  preaches  about  it,  some  dear  brother  or 
sister  will  remind  him  that  he  might  better  preach 
the  simple  Gospel,  whatever  that  really  is.  I  have 
never  quite  found  out.  To  me  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  as  broad  as  humanity,  and  as  deep  as  human 
experience.  Any  narrow,  stingy  conception  of  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is  an  insult  to  Jesus  Christ 
and  a  slander  upon  Christianity. 

Study  sympathetically,  then,  the  every-day  prob- 
lems of  this  great  mass  of  people  who  are  understood 
by  the  Socialists,  who  are  understood  by  the  trades 
unionists,  who  are  understood  by  those  anarchists 
who  are  quite  ready  to  lead  them  into  grave  and 
serious  errors,  as  you  so  often  put  it.  They  under- 
stand them,  but  do  you  ? 


32  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

In  the  second  place,  we  must  stay  by  the  people 
and  help  them  solve  their  problems.  Ordinarily, 
when  we  take  up  city  mission  work,  we  will  or- 
ganize a  mission  on  a  side  street,  in  a  dark,  dingy, 
dirty  building,  and  put  in  charge  of  it  a  man  to 
whom  we  will  pay  about  six  hundred  dollars  a  year, 
and  then  expect  him  to  solve  problems  that  would 
stagger  many  a  six-thousand-dollar  man.  Then  we 
wonder  why  we  are  not  getting  at  the  great  social 
problems  in  our  cities.  We  are  putting  our  poorest 
men  in  these  strategic  centers,  and  then  desert  them, 
letting  them  fight  their  own  battles,  and  sometimes 
we  permit  them  to  kill  themselves  in  their  efforts 
to  help  the  people  whom  they  have  come  to  under- 
stand. 

To  do  this  we  need  more  of  the  social  spirit. 
This  means  more  than  merely  being  sociable,  if 
you  please.  Oyster  suppers,  strawberry  festivals,  ice- 
cream socials,  and  chicken  pie  are  not  going  to  do 
it.  It  requires  something  else.  We  must  make  the 
people  the  end  of  our  endeavors.  We  must  talk 
less  about  building  up  the  Church  and  more  about 
building  up  the  people.  We  must  remember  that 
the  Church  is  a  force  and  not  a  field. 

I  wish  sometimes  that  I  could  hit  our  system 
of  judging  of  the  success  of  a  minister  in  a  city 
mission  field.  The  Presbyterian  minister  is  sup- 
posed to  report  to  the  General  Assembly  the  number 
of  people  received  on  profession  of  faith.  That  is 
the  criterion  of  his  success.  Your  Methodist  preacher 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  33 

must  report  to  the  Conference  or  district  superintend- 
ent the  same  thing.  If  he  does  not  "make  good"  in 
that  respect,  we  question  whether  Brother  So-and-so 
is  really  doing  a  good  work  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord.  This  standard  takes  no  account  at  all  of  the 
larger  work  that  that  man  may  be  doing  as  he  lives 
day  by  day  by  the  side  of  these  poor  people,  who 
look  upon  him  as  their  only  friend  in  that  com- 
munity. Through  him  their  problems  are  being 
solved,  and  if  it  were  not  for  his  life  and  his  work, 
day  after  day,  week  after  week,  year  after  year,  their 
lives  would  be  a  veritable  hell.  Let  us  change  the 
basis  of  our  judgment  in  regard  to  the  work  of 
these  men  who  are  standing  by  the  people  and  help- 
ing them. 

A  little  while  ago  I  was  speaking  to  a  mass- 
meeting  of  workingmen  in  one  of  our  New  England 
cities.  It  was  a  theater  meeting.  A  minister  was 
asked  to  pray.  The  minister  prayed  something  like 
this:  "O  Lord,  we  pray  Thee,  keep  the  little  chil- 
dren out  of  the  machinery  in  the  mills  and  factories !" 
When  I  got  up  to  speak,  I  could  not  resist  the  temp- 
tation; I  said  that  I,  too,  would  pray  that  prayer. 
"0  God,  keep  these  little  children  out  of  the  wheels ; 
keep  them  from  having  their  young,  fresh,  sweet 
lives  crushed  out.  But,  gentlemen,"  I  said,  "don't 
let 's  put  the  whole  thing  up  to  the  Lord.  Let  us 
put  it  up  to  the  Legislature.  Let  us  put  it  up  to 
the  owners  of  the  mills  and  factories,  and  compel 
them  to  keep  the  little  children  out  of  the  wheels." 
3 


34  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

This  business  of  assuming  a  holy  tone  and  offering 
a  pious  prayer,  and  then  stopping  there,  is  not  the 
method  of  Jesus  Christ.  Let  us  stay  by  the  people 
and  let  us  help  them  solve  their  problems. 

Third,  we  must  socialize  our  teaching  and  socially 
convert  our  membership.  There  is  many  an  honest 
Church  member  who  has  been  converted  spiritually 
but  who  has  never  caught  the  social  vision.  He  has 
never  been  converted  socially.  There  is  a  great  dif- 
ference between  the  two.  There  are  many  professing 
Christians  who  believe  they  are  keeping  the  first  great 
commandment,  but  who  are  altogether  ignoring  the 
second,  which  Christ  said  was  like  unto  the  first. 

We  must  supply  competent  leaders  who  will 
direct  the  people  in  their  struggle.  We  need  a  volun- 
teer movement  for  home  and  city  missions,  as  well 
as  for  foreign  missions.  We  need  talented  men  and 
women  who, have  caught  a  vision,  and  who  will  say, 
I  shall  consecrate  my  life  to  America,  to  the  city, 
to  the  solution  of  these  great  social  problems.  ~No 
man  or  woman  is  too  good  for  that  kind  of  a  job, 
for  it  will  require  the  best  talent  that  God  ever 
gave  anybody.  O,  that  God  might  raise  up  such 
leaders  in  our  own  beloved  land  who  will  help  solve 
the  city  problem,  the  labor  problem,  the  immigra- 
tion problem.  There  surely  can  be  no  greater  obli- 
gation to  strong  men  and  women  than  that  which 
comes  from  our  great  country.  Instead  of  making 
a  city  mission  field  a  stepping-stone  for  a  so-called 
better  position,  bright  men  and  women  should  grasp 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  35 

the  opportunities  that  are  to  be  found  on  every  side 
of  that  apparently  smaller  field. 

The  Church  must  insist  on  Christ's  method  for 
changing  social  conditions.  Jesus  Christ  lived  in 
an  age  which  was  infinitely  worse  than  this.  Half 
the  world  lived  in  slavery.  The  philosophers  of  that 
period  asserted  that  a  purchased  laborer  was  better 
than  a  hired  one.  Jesus  denounced  these  conditions 
as  no  other  man  of  His  time  dared  denounce  them. 
But  instead  of  advocating  another  social  system,  He 
began  to  change  the  individual  man.  Josh  Billings 
once  said,  "Before  you  can  have  an  honest  horse 
race,  you  must  have  an  honest  human  race."  I  think 
there  is  lots  of  horse  sense  in  that  expression.  Be- 
fore you  can  have  an  ideal  social  system  you  must 
have  ideal  men. 

I  need  not  say  to  you  that  I  have  the  largest 
sympathy  for  the  man  who  is  living  in  an  environ- 
ment that  is  debasing  and  degrading.  I  ^  would  do 
all  in  my  power  to  help  him.  But  after  every- 
thing else  has  been  said,  it  is  what  a  man  is  within 
and  not  what  he  is  without  that  shall  determine 
that  man's  destiny.  ~No  social  system  that  would 
be  satisfactory  to  our  day  and  generation  would  be 
satisfactory  to  the  next  generation,  because  we  are 
growing,  and  I  praise  God  for  it.  Let  me  repeat  it, 
Jesus  Christ  did  not  advocate  another  social  sys- 
tem, but  He  laid  down  certain  fundamental  prin- 
ciples which  are  applicable  to  every  generation,  and 
these  are  the  principles  which  the  Church  is  to 


36  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

advocate,  because  in  the  end  the  social  problem  is 
a  moral  and  religious  problem.  It  will  never  be 
settled  on  any  other  basis. 

Socialism  and  communism  and  anarchy  are  fun- 
damentally moral  problems.  I  would  not  attempt  to 
give  a  definition  of  Socialism  which  would  be  sat- 
isfactory to  every  Socialist.  But  here  is  one  that 
satisfies  a  good  many:  "From  every  man  according 
to  his  ability;  to  every  man  according  to  his  need." 
If  that  means  anything,  it  means  a  life  of  service. 
Communism  means  the  giving  up  of  one's  personal 
interest.  That  implies  a  life  of  self-sacrifice.  Your 
anarchist  believes  that  men  will  do  right  without 
having  the  strong  arm  of  the  law  to  compel  them. 
Bomb  throwing  is  not  an  essential  part  of  anarchy. 
I  speak,  of  course,  of  philosophical  anarchy.  That 
implies  a  high  sense  of  love,  of  purity,  of  righteous- 
ness. Each  of  these  presupposes  a  strong  moral  char- 
acter, the  elimination  of  selfishness,  and  the  suprem- 
acy of  love.  Before  any  of  them  can  ever  be  intro- 
duced there  must,  first  of  all,  be  a  radical  change  in 
the  selfish  hearts  of  men.  To  change  men's  selfish 
hearts  is  the  chief  business  of  the  Church,  and  be- 
cause it  is  true,  the  Church  has  a  most  important 
part  in  the  solution  of  the  social  problem.  This  is 
the  principle  on  which  Jesus  Christ  operated,  and 
it  is  because  Christ  operated  upon  this  principle  that 
His  power  is  coming  more  and  more  to  be  recog- 
nized. 

Napoleon,  exiled  on  St.  Helena,  turned  to  Gen- 


The  Spirit  of  Social  Unrest  37 

eral  Bertrand  and  said :  "I  know  men.  And  I  tell 
you  that  Jesus  was  not  a  mere  man.  Between  Him 
and  whomever  else  in  all  the  world  besides,  there  are 
no  possible  terms  of  •  comparison.  Alexander,  Csesar, 
Charlemagne,  and  myself  founded  empires,  but  upon 
what  did  we  rest  the  success  of  our  genius  ?  Upon 
force.  Jesus  Christ  alone  founded  His  empire  upon 
love,  and  at  this  very  hour  there  are  millions  of  men 
who  would  die  for  Him."  Jean  Paul  Kichter  once 
wrote:  "The  life  of  Christ  concerns  Him  who,  be- 
ing the  mightiest  among  the  holy,  the  holiest  among 
the  mighty,  lifted  with  His  pierced  hands  empires 
off  their  hinges,  turned  the  stream  of  centuries  out 
of  its  channel,  and  still  governs  the  ages." 

Here  is  a  company  of  men  interested  in  the  social 
problem,  who  are  saying  that  if  we  are  to  solve  it 
we  must  go  back  to  Christ.  Here  is  another  com- 
pany who  say,  "ETo,  not  back  to  Christ,  but  for- 
ward with  Christ."  But,  whether  it  is  backward 
or  forward,  it  is  Christ  and  Christ  alone  to  whom 
we  look  for  the  solution  of  this  social  question.  He 
is  the  court  of  last  appeal.  Who  thinks  of  going 
to  Socrates,  or  Plato,  or  any  other  philosopher  of 
ancient  or  modern  times,  for  the  final  word  on  the 
social  problem  ?  But  if  we  can  get  a  clear  statement 
of  Christ's  concerning  the  matter,  the  question  is 
settled  for  all  time.  Therefore  we  can  afford  to  take 
our  stand  upon  the  principles  of  Jesus. 

In  this  controversy,  I  can  tell  you  who  is  going 


38  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

to  win.  It  will  be  that  company  of  men  who  will 
accept  the  leadership  of  Christ. 

Jesus  has  sent  a  challenge  to  workingmen.  He 
is  saying  to  them:  "Follow  Me.  Accept  My  prin- 
ciples. Make  them  the  controlling  principles  of  your 
lives,  and  no  power  in  all  the  universe  can  stop  the 
onward  march  of  the  working-people  of  the  world." 
He  is  also  saying  to  employers:  "Make  My  prin- 
ciples the  ruling  principles  in  your  dealings  with  your 
employees  and  with  one  another.  If  you  do,  you  are 
sure  to  win,  because  I  am  sure  to  win." 

God  grant  that  both  workingmen  and  employers 
may  come  to  Jesus  Christ  as  brothers,  and  say  to 
Him:  "We,  O  our  Elder  Brother,  accept  You  as 
our  Leader.  We  will  accept  Your  principles  as  the 
controlling  principles  of  our  lives  I" 


II 

WOMAN'S  CONSCIENCE  AND 
SOCIAL  AMELIORATION 

JANE  ADDAMS, 
Director  of  Hull  House,  Chicago. 


II. 

WOMAN'S   CONSCIENCE  AND  SOCIAL 
AMELIOKATION. 

WE  have  been  accustomed  for  many  generations 
to  think  of  woman's  place  as  being  entirely  within 
the  walls  of  her  own  household,  and  it  is  indeed  im- 
possible to  imagine  the  time  when  her  duty  there 
shall  be  ended  or  to  forecast  any  social  change  which 
shall  ever  release  her  from  that  paramount  obligation. 
There  is  no  doubt,  however,  that  many  women  to-day 
are  failing  properly  to  discharge  their  duties  to  their 
own  families  and  households  simply  because  they  fail 
to  see  that  as  society  grows  more  complicated  it  is 
necessary  that  woman  shall  extend  her  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility to  many  things  outside  of  her  own  home, 
if  only  in  order  to  preserve  the  home  in  its  entirety. 

One  could  illustrate  in  many  ways.  A  woman's 
simplest  duty,"  one  would  say,  is  to  keep  her  house 
clean  and  wholesome  and  to  feed  her  children  prop- 
erly. Yet,  if  she  lives  in  a  tenement  house,  as  so 
many  of  my  neighbors  do,  she  can  not  fulfill  these 
simple  obligations  by  her  own  efforts  because  she 
is  utterly  dependent  upon  the  city  administration  for 
the  conditions  which  render  decent  living  possible. 

41 


42  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

Her  basement  will  not  be  dry,  her  stairways  will 
not  be  fireproof,  her  house  will  not  be  provided  with 
sufficient  windows  to  give  her  light  and  air,  nor  will 
it  be  equipped  with  sanitary  plumbing  unless  the 
Public  Works  Department  shall  send  inspectors  who 
constantly  insist  that  these  elementary  decencies  be 
provided.  These  same  women  who  now  live  in  tene- 
ments, when  they  lived  in  the  country,  swept  their 
own  dooryards  and  either  fed  the  refuse  of  the  table 
to  a  flock  of  chickens  or  allowed  it  innocently  to 
decay  in  the  open  air  and  sunshine;  now,  however, 
if  the  street  is  not  cleaned  by  the  city  authorities, 
no  amount  of  private  sweeping  will  keep  the  tenant 
free  from  grime;  if  the  garbage  is  not  properly  col- 
lected and  destroyed,  she  may  see  her  children  sicken 
and  die  of  diseases  from  which  she  alone  is  power- 
less to  shield  them,  although  her  tenderness  and  de- 
votion are  unbounded ;  she  can  not  even  secure  clean 
milk  for  her  children,  she  can  not  provide  them  with 
fruit  which  is  untainted,  unless  the  milk  has  been 
properly  taken  care  of  by  the  City  Health  Depart- 
ment, and  the  decayed  fruit,  which  is  so  often  placed 
upon  sale  in  the  tenement  districts,  shall  have  been 
promptly  destroyed  in  the  interest  of  public  health. 
In  short,  if  woman  would  keep  on  with  her  old  busi- 
ness of  caring  for  her  house  and  rearing  her  children, 
fshe  will  have  to  have  some  conscience  in  regard  to 
public  affairs  lying  quite  outside  of  her  immediate 
household.  The  individual  conscience  and  devotion 
are  no  longer  effective.  In  the  tenement  quarters 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  43 

of  Chicago,  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  last  spring  we 
had  a  spreading  contagion  of  scarlet  fever  just  at  the 
time  that  the  school  nurses  had  been  discontinued, 
because  it  was  supposed  that  they  were  no  longer 
necessary.  If  the  women  who  sent  their  children 
to  these  schools  had  been  sufficiently  public-spirited 
they  would  have  insisted  that  the  schools  be  supplied 
with  nurses  -in  order  that  their  own  children  might 
be  protected  from  contagion.  So  I  could  go  on  with 
a  dozen  other  illustrations.  Women  are  pushed  out- 
side of  the  home  in  order  that  they  may  preserve 
the  home.  If  they  would  effectively  continue  their 
old  avocations,  they  must  take  part  in  the  movements 
looking  toward  social  amelioration. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  contention  may  be  equally 
well  illustrated  by  women  who  take  no  part  in  public 
affairs  in  order  that  they  may  give  themselves  exclu- 
sively to  their  own  families,  sometimes  going  so  far 
as  to  despise  their  neighbors  and  their  ways,  and  even 
to  take  a  certain  pride  in  being  separate  from  them. 
Our  own  neighborhood  was  at  one  time  suffering  from 
a  typhoid  epidemic.  Although  the  Nineteenth  Ward 
had  but  one  thirty-sixth  of  the  population  of  Chicago, 
it  had  one-sixth  of  all  the  deaths  in  the  city  occur- 
ring from  typhoid.  A  careful  investigation  was  made 
by  which  we  were  able  to  establish  a  very  close  con- 
nection between  the  typhoid  and  a  mode  of  plumbing 
which  made  it  most  probable  that  the  infection  had 
been  carried  by  flies.  Among  the  people  who  had  been 
exposed  to  the  infection  was  a  widow  who  had  lived 


44  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

in  the  ward  for  a  number  of  years,  in  a  comfortable 
little  house  which  she  owned.  Although  the  Italian 
immigrants  were  closing  in  all  around  her,  she  was 
not  willing  to  sell  her  property  and  to  move  away 
until  she  had  finished  the  education  of  her  children, 
because  she  considered  that  her  paramount  duty.  In 
the  meantime  she  held  herself  quite  aloof  from  her 
Italian  neighbors  and  their  affairs.  Her  two 
daughters  were  sent  to  an  Eastern  college;  one  had 
graduated,  the  other  had  still  two  years  before  she 
took  her  degree,  when  they  came  home  to  the  spotless 
little  house  and  to  their  self-sacrificing  mother  for 
the  summer's  holiday.  They  both  fell  ill, — not  be- 
cause their  own  home  was  not  clean,  not  because  their 
mother  was  not  devoted,  but  because  next  door  to 
them  and  also  in  the  rear  were  wretched  tenements 
and  because  the  mother's  utmost  efforts  could  not  keep 
the  infection  out  of  her  own  house.  One  daughter 
died,  and  one  recovered,  but  was  an  invalid  for  two 
years  following.  This  is,  perhaps,  a  fair  illustration 
of  the  futility  of  the  individual  conscience  when 
woman  insists  upon  isolating  her  family  from  the 
rest  of  the  community  and  its  interests.  The  result 
is  sure  to  be  a  pitiful  failure. 

In  the  process  of  socialization  of  their  affairs, 
women  might  have  received  many  suggestions  from 
the  changes  in  the  organization  of  industry  which 
have  been  going  on  for  the  last  century.  Ever  since 
steam  power  has  been  applied  to  the  processes  of 
spinning  and  weaving,  woman's  old  traditional  work 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  45 

has  been  slowly  but  inevitably  slipping  out  of  the 
household  into  the  factory.  The  clothing  is  not  only 
spun  and  woven  but  largely  sewed  by  machinery; 
the  household  linen,  the  preparation  of  grains,  the 
butter  and  cheese  have  also  passed  into  the  factory, 
and,  necessarily,  a  certain  number  of  women  have 
been  obliged  to  follow  their  work  there,  although  it 
is  doubtful,  in  spite  of  the  large  number  of  factory 
girls,  whether  women  now  are  doing  as  large  a  pro- 
portion of  the  world's  work  as  they  used  to  do.  If 
we  contemplate  the  many  thousands  of  them  who 
enter  industry  and  who  are  working  in  factories  and 
shops,  we  at  once  recognize  the  great  necessity  there 
is  that  older  women  should  feel  interested  in  the  con- 
ditions of  industry.  According  to  the  census  reports, 
there  are  in  the  United  States  more  than  five  million 
self-supporting  women.  Most  of  them  are  between 
the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty-four,  so  that  when 
we  say  working-women  we  really  mean  workingrgirls. 
It  is  the  first  time  in  history  that  such  numbers 
of  young  girls  have  been  permitted  to  walk  unat- 
tended on  city  streets  and  to  work  unde^  alien  roofs. 
The  very  fact  that  these  girls  are  not  going  to  remain 
in  industry  permanently  makes  it  more  important 
that  some  one  should  see  to  it  that  they  shall  not 
be  incapacitated  for  their  future  family  life  because 
they  work  for  exhausting  hours  and  under  unsanitary 
conditions.  One  would  imagine  that  as  our  grand- 
mothers guarded  the  health  and  morals  of  the  young 
women  who  spun  and  wove  and  sewed  in  their  house- 


46  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

hold,  so  the  women  of  to-day  would  feel  equally 
responsible  for  the  young  girls  who  are  doing  the 
same  work  under  changed  conditions.  This  would 
be  true  if  women's  sense  of  obligation  had  modified 
and  enlarged  as  the  social  conditions  changed,  so  that 
she  might  naturally  and  almost  imperceptibly  have 
linaugurated  the  movements  for  social  amelioration  in 
'  the  line  of  factory  legislation  and  shop  sanitation. 
That  she  has  not  done  so  is  doubtless  due  to  the 
fact  that  her  conscience  is  slow  to  recognize  any  obli- 
gation outside  of  her  own  family  circle  and  because 
she  was  so  absorbed  in  her  own  affairs  that  she  failed 
to  see  what  the  conditions  outside  actually  were. 
As  one  industry  after  another  has  slipped  from  the 
household ;  as  the  education  of  her  children  has  been 
more  and  more  transferred  to  the  school,  so  that  now 
children  of  four  years  old  begin  to  go  to  the  kinder- 
garten, the  woman  has  been  left  in  a  household  of 
constantly  narrowing  interests. 

Possibly  the  first  step  towards  restoration  is  pub- 
licity as  to  industrial  affairs,  for  we  are  all  able  to 
see  only  th^se  things  to  which  we  bring  the  "in- 
forming mind."  Perhaps  you  will  permit  me  to 
illustrate  from  a  group  of  home-keeping  women  who 
became  interested  in  the  problem  of  child  labor.  I 
was  at  one  time  a  member  of  the  Industrial  Com- 
mittee of  the  General  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs, 
which -is,  as  you  know,  an  association  of  women's 
clubs  from  all  parts  of  the  United  States.  We  were 
very  much  interested  in  finding  out  how  much  child 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  47 

labor  prevailed  in  the  various  States  in  which  no 
legislation  had  been  passed  for  the  protection  of  chil- 
dren. We  sent  out  questionnaires  to  all  the  women's 
clubs,  and  among  others  we  received  a  very  inter- 
esting reply  from  a  woman's  club  in  Florida.  We 
had  asked  that  the  club  members  count  all  of  the 
children  under  fourteen  who  were  at  work  in  the 
factories  and  mills  in  the  club  vicinities.  The 
Florida  women  sent  back  the  reply  that  they  had 
found  three  thousand  children  in  the  sugar  factories, 
and  they  added  that  they  were  very  sorry  that  we 
had  not  asked  them  about  child  labor  earlier,  because 
their  Legislature  would  not  convene  for  two  years 
and  there  would  be  no  chance  until  then  to  secure 
protective  legislation.  They  evidently  thought  that 
it  was  very  remiss  on  the  part  of  the  committee  that 
they  had  not  earlier  called  their  attention  to  child 
labor  conditions.  The  whole  incident  is  a  good  illus- 
tration of  the  point  we  would  make.  These  women 
had  lived  in  the  same  place  for  years.  The  children 
had  doubtless  gone  to  work  back  and  forth  right 
under  their  windows,  but  they  had  never  looked  in 
order  to  count  them  and  did  not  even  know  they 
were  there.  The  Industrial  Committee  sent  out  a 
questionnaire  which  said,  in  effect,  "Please  look  out 
of  your  windows  and  count  the  working-children." 
The  club  women  suddenly  waked  up  and  bestirred 
themselves  to  protect  the  children  they  had  thus  dis- 
covered. Something  of  that  sort  goes  on  in  every 
community.  We  see  those  things  to  which  our  at- 


48  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

tention  has  been  drawn,  we  feel  responsibility  for 
those  things  which  are  brought  to  us  as  matters  of 
responsibility.  In  what  direction,  then,  should 
women  at  the  present  moment  look  towards  a  more 
effective  amelioration  for  the  many  social  ills  which 
are  all  about  us? 

If  they  follow  only  the  lines  of  their  traditional 
activities,  there  are  certainly  three  primary  duties 
which  we  would  all  admit  belong  to  even  the  most 
conservative  women  and  which  no  one  woman  or 
group  of  women  can  adequately  discharge,  unless 
they  join  the  more  general  movements  looking  toward 
social  amelioration. 

The  first  of  these  is  a  responsibility  for  the  mem- 
/  bers  of  her  own  household,  that  they  may  be  properly 
**  fed  and  clothed  and  surrounded  by  hygienic  condi- 
tions. 

The  second  is  responsibility  for  the  education  of 
children,  that  they  may  be  provided  with  good 
schools,  or  kept  free  from  vicious  influences  on  the 
streets,  and  as  a  natural  result  of  this  concern,  that 
when  they  first  go  to  work  that  they  shall  be  pro- 
tected from  dangerous  machinery  and  from  exhaust- 
ing hours. 

The  third  is  responsibility  for  the  social  standards 
of  the  community,  implying  some  comprehension  of 
the  difficulties  and  perplexities  of  the  newly  arrived 
'immigrant,  and  adequate  provision  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  music  and  other  art  sources  which  the  com- 
munity may  contain. 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  49 

We  have  already  touched  upon  the  first  line  of 
obligation  and  the  difficulty  of  securing  pure  food 
without  the  help  of  pure  food  laws  on  the  part 
State  and  federal  authorities  and  the  impossibility 
of  keeping  the  tenement  family  in  sanitary  surround- 
ings without  the  constant  regulation  on  the  part  of 
city  officials.  If  the  public  authorities  are  indifferent 
to  wretched  conditions,  as  they  often  are,  the  only 
effective  way  to  secure  their  reform  is  by  a  concerted  * 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  women  who  are  responsible 
for  the  households.  Perhaps  you  will  permit  me  l 
to  illustrate  from  the  Hull  House  Woman's  Club: 
One  summer,  fifteen  years  ago,  we  discovered  the 
death  rate  in  our  ward  for  children  under  five  years 
of  age  was  far  above  the  average,  rating  second  high- 
est of  any  ward  in  town.  An  investigation  disclosed 
that,  among  other  things,  the  refuse  was  not  prop- 
erly collected.  The  woman's  club  divided  the  ward 
into  sections,  and  three  times  every  week  certain 
women  went  through  each  section  in  order  to  find 
out  what  could  be  done  to  make  the  territory  clean. 
Of  course  it  is  not  very  pleasant  to  go  up  and  down 
the  alleys  and  get  into  trouble  with  people  about 
garbage  conditions;  it  takes  a  good  deal  of  moral 
vigor  and  civic  determination  to  do  it  effectively. 
Yet  the  members  of  the  club  did  this  day  after  day 
until  they  were  able  to  gather  sufficient  material  to 
dismiss  three  inspectors  from  office  and  finally  to 
secure  the  appointment  of  a  competent  inspector. 
When  the  ward  became  cleaner,  when  the  death  rate 
4 


50  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

fell  month  by  month,  and  each  health  bulletin  was 
read  in  the  Woman's  Club,  all  the  members  listened 
with  breathless  interest.  I  shall  never  forget  the 
day,  three  years  later,  when  the  club  broke  into  ap- 
plause because  the  death  rate  of  our  ward  had  fallen 
to  the  average.  They  felt  that  they  had  been  re- 
sponsible in  securing  this  result,  that  the  neighbor- 
hood had  been  brought  into  a  reasonable  condition 
through  their  initiative  and  concerted  effort.  Of 
course,  the  household  of  each  woman  profited  by  the 
result,  but  it  could  not  have  been  secured  through 
the  unaided  effort  of  any  one  household.  One  might 
use,  by  way  of  illustration,  the  impossibility  of  know- 
ing the  sanitary  conditions  under  which  clothing  is 
produced,  unless  women  join  together  into  an  asso- 
ciation like  the  Consumers'  League,  which  supports 
officers  whose  business  it  is  to  inform  the  members 
of  the  league  as  to  garments  which  are  made  in  sweat- 
shops and  to  indicate  by  a  label  those  which  are 
produced  under  sanitary  conditions.  Country  doc- 
tors testify  as  to  the  outbreak  of  scarlet  fever  in  re- 
mote neighborhoods  each  autumn,  after  the  children 
have  begun  to  wear  the  winter  cloaks  and  overcoats 
which  have  been  sent  from  infected  city  sweatshops. 
That  their  mothers  mend  their  stockings  and  guard 
them  from  "taking  cold"  is  not  a  sufficient  protec- 
tion when  the  tailoring  of  the  family  is  done  in  a 
distant  city  under  conditions  which  the  mother  can 
not  possibly  control.  Sweatshop  legislation  and  the 
organization  of  consumers'  leagues  are  the  most 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  51 

obvious  lines  of  amelioration  of  those  glaring  social 
evils  which  directly  affect  family  life. 

The  duty  of  the  mother  towards  schools  which 
her  children  attend  is  so  obvious  that  it  is  not  neces- 
sary to  dwell  upon  it,  but  even  this  simple  obliga- 
tion can  not  be  effectively  carried  out  without  some 
form  of  social  organization,  as  the  mothers'  school 
clubs  and  mothers'  congresses  testify.  But  women 
are  also  beginning  to  realize  that  children  need  at- 
tention outside  of  school  hours;  that  much  of  the 
petty  vice  in  cities  is  merely  the  love  of  pleasure 
gone  wrong,  the  over-restrained  boy  or  girl  seeking 
improper  recreation  and  excitement,  {in  Chicago  a 
map  has  recently  been  made  demonstrating  that 
juvenile  crime  is  decreasing  in  the  territory  sur- 1 
rounding  the  finely  equipped  playgrounds  and  ath-  k 
letic  fields  which  the  South  Park  Board  three  years  ( 
ago  placed  in  thirteen  small  parks.  \  We  know  in 
Chicago,  from  ten  years'  experience  in  a  juvenile 
court,  that  many  boys  are  arrested  from  sheer  excess 
of  animal  spirits,  because  they  do  not  know  what  to 
do  with  themselves  after  •  school.  The  most  daring 
thing  the  leader  of  a  gang  of  boys  can  do  is  to  break 
into  an  empty  house,  steal  the  plumbing  fixtures 
and  sell  them  for  money  with  which  to  treat  the 
gang.  Of  course  that  sort  of  thing  gets  a  boy  into 
very  serious  trouble,  and  is  almost  sure  to  land  him 
in  the  reform  school.  It  is  obvious  that  a  little 
collective  study  of  the  needs  of  the  boys,  a  sympa- 
thetic understanding  of  the  conditions  under  which 


52  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

they  go  astray,  might  save  hundreds  of  them.  Women 
traditionally  have  had  an  opportunity  to  observe  the 
plays  of  children  and  the  needs  of  growing  boys,  and 
yet  they  have  done  singularly  little  in  this  vexed 
problem  of  juvenile  delinquency  until  they  helped  to 
inaugurate  the  juvenile  court  movement  a  dozen  years 
ago;  since  then  they  have  done  valiant  service,  and 
they  are  at  last  trying  to  minimize  some  of  the 
dangers  of  city  life  which  boys  and  girls  encounter; 
they  are  beginning  to  see  the  relation  between  public 
recreation  and  social  morality.  The  women  of  Chi- 
cago are  studying  the  effect  of  these  recreational  cen- 
ters provided  by  the  South  Park  Committee  upon 
the  social  life  of  the  older  people  who  use  them. 
One  thing  they  have  done  is  enormously  to  decrease 
the  patronage  of  the  neighboring  saloons.  Before  we 
had  these  park  houses,  the  saloon  hall  was  hired  for 
weddings  and  christenings,  or  any  sort  of  an  event 
which  in  the  foreign  mind  is  associated  with  gen- 
eral feasting,  because  the  only  places  for  hire  were 
the  public  halls  attached  to  the  saloons.  As  you 
know,  the  saloon  hall  is  rented  free,  with  the  under- 
standing that  a  certain  amount  of  money  be  paid 
across  the  bar;  that  is,  the  rent  must  be  made  up  in 
other  ways.  The  park  hall,  of  course,  is  under  no 
such  temptation  and,  therefore,  drinking  has  almost 
ceased  at  the  parties  held  in  the  parks.  -If  a  man 
must  go  two  or  three  blocks  to  get  an  alcoholic  drink, 
and  can  step  down-stairs  to  secure  other  refresh- 
ments, it  goes  without  saying  that  in  most  cases  he 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  53 

does  the  latter.  The  park  halls  close  promptly  at 
eleven  o'clock.  The  city  is,  therefore,  approaching 
the  temperance  problem  from  the  point  of  view  of 
substitution,  which  appears  to  some  of  us  more 
reasonable  than  the  solely  restrictive  method.  Many 
of  the  larger  movements  towards  social  amelioration 
in  which  women  are  active  have  taken  their  rise 
from  the  interest  the  women  felt  in  the  affairs 
of  the  juvenile  court,  and  yet  this  does  not  mean 
that  collective  effort  minimizes  individual  concern. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  often  see  a  woman  stirred 
to  individual  effort  only  after  she  has  been  brought 
into  contact  with  the  general  movement.  I  recall  a 
woman  in  the  Hull  House  neighborhood  who,  al- 
though she  had  a  large  family  of  her  own,  took  charge 
every  evening  of  a  boy  whose  mother  scrubbed  offices 
down-town  every  day  from  five  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon until  eleven  at  night.  This  kindly  woman  gave 
the  boy  his  supper  with  her  own  children,  saw  that 
he  got  into  no  difficulty  during  the  evening,  and 
allowed  him  to  sleep  on  the  lounge  in  her  sitting- 
room  until  his  mother  came  by  in  the  evening  and 
took  him  home.  After  she  had  been  doing  this  for 
about  six  months,  I  spoke  to  her  about  it  one  day 
and  congratulated  her  on  her  success  with  the  boy, 
who  had  formerly  been  a  ward  of  the  juvenile  court. 
She  replied  that  she  had  undertaken  to  help  the 
boy  because  the  juvenile  court  officer  had  spoken 
to  her  about  him  and  had  said  that  he  thought  she 
might  be  willing  to  help  because  he  had  observed 


54  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

her  interest  in  juvenile  court  matters.  Although 
the  boy's  mother  was  a  neighbor  of  hers,  she  had 
not  apparently  seen  her  obligation  to  the  lad  until 
it  had  been  brought  home  to  her  in  this  somewhat 
remote  way.  It  is  another  illustration  of  our  in- 
ability to  see  the  duty  "next  to  hand"  until  we 
have  become  alert  through  our  knowledge  of  condi- 
tions in  connection  with  the  larger  duties.  We 
would  all  agree  that  social  amelioration  must  come 
about  through  the  efforts  of  many  people  who  are 
moved  thereto  by  the  compunction  and  stirring  of 
the  individual  conscience,  but  we  are  only  beginning 
to  understand  that  the  individual  conscience  will  re- 
spond to  the  special  challenge  and  will  heed  the  call 
largely  in  proportion  as  the  individual  is  able  to  see 
the  social  conditions  and  intelligently  to  understand 
the  larger  need.  Therefore,  careful  investigation  and 
mutual  discussion  is  perhaps  the  first  step  in  securing 
the  legal  enactment  and  civic  amelioration  of  obvious 
social  ills. 

The  third  line  of  effort  which  every  community 
needs  to  have  carried  on  if  it  would  obtain  a  social 
life  in  any  real  sense,  I  may  perhaps  illustrate  from 
experiments  at  Hull  House,  not  because  they  have 
been  especially  successful,  but  because  an  attempt 
has  there  been  made  to  develop  the  social  resources 
of  an  immigrant  community. 

If  an  historian,  one  hundred  years  from  now, 
should  write  the  social  history  of  America,  he  would 
probably  say  that  one  of  the  marked  characteristics 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  55 

of  our  time  was  the  arrival  of  immigrants  at  the 
rate  of  a  million  a  year  and  the  fact  that  the 
American  people  had  little  social  connection  with 
them.  If  the  historian  a  hundred  years  hence  used 
the  same  phrases  which  the  psychologists  now  use — 
perhaps  they  will  get  over  them  by  that  time — he 
would  say  that  our  minds  seem  to  be  "inhibited" 
by  certain  mental  concepts  which  apparently  pre- 
vented us  from  forming  social  relations  with  immi- 
grants. What  are  these  mental  concepts,  this  state 
of  mind  which  keeps  us  apart  from  the  immigrant 
populations?  The  difference  in  language,  in  reli- 
gion, in  history  and  tradition  always  makes  social 
intercourse  difficult,  and  yet  every  year  people  go 
to  Europe  for  the  very  purpose  of  overcoming  that 
difference  and  of  seeing  the  life  of  other  nations. 
They  discover  that  people  may  differ  in  language 
and  education  and  still  possess  similar  interests.  We 
would  say  that  a  person  who  went  to  Europe  and 
returned  without  that  point  of  view  had  made  rather 
a  failure  of  his  trip.  In  the  midst  of  American 
cities  there  are  various  colonies  of  immigrants  who 
represent  European  life  and  conditions,  and  that  we 
who  stay  at  home  know  so  little  about  them  is  only 
because  we  do  not  make  the  adequate  effort.  We 
have  in  the  neighborhood  of  Hull  House  a  colony  of 
about  five  thousand  Greeks,  who  once  produced  in 
the  Hull  House  theater  the  classic  play  of  "Ajax," 
written  by  Sophocles.  The  Greeks  were  very  much 
surprised  when  the  professors  came  from  the  various 


56  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

universities  in  order  to  follow  the  play  in  the  Greek 
text  from  books  which  they  brought  with  them.  The 
Greeks  were  surprised,  because  they  did  not  know 
there  were  so  many  people  in  Chicago  who  cared  for 
ancient  Greece.  The  professors  in  turn  were  aston- 
ished to  know  that  the  modern  Greeks  were  able  to 
give  such  a  charming  interpretation  of  Sophocles. 
It  was  a  mutual  revelation  on  both  sides.  On  one 
side  the  Greeks  felt  more  nearly  a  part  of  America, 
and  on  the  other  side  the  professors  felt  that  perhaps 
the  traditions  had  not  been  so  wholly  broken  in 
the  case  of  Greece  as  they  had  been  led  to  believe. 
It  would  have  been  difficult  for  the  Greeks  to  have 
made  for  themselves  all  the  preliminary  arrangements 
for  this  play;  they  needed  some  people  to  act  as 
ambassador,  as  it  were,  and  yet  they  themselves  pos- 
sessed this  tradition,  the  historic  background,  this 
beauty  of  classic  form,  which  our  American  cities  so 
sadly  need  and  which  they  were  able  to  supply. 

We  may  illustrate  from  Italy,  if  you  please,  the 
very  word  which  charms  us  so  completely  when  we 
hear  it  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  yet 
it  means  so  little  to  us  in  our  own  country.  These 
colonies  of  Italians  might  yield  to  our  American  life 
something  very  valuable  if  their  resources  were  in- 
telligently studied  and  developed.  They  have  all  sorts 
of  artistic  susceptibility,  and  even  trained  craftsman- 
ship, which  is  never  recovered  for  use  here.  I  tell 
the  story  sometimes  of  an  Italian  who  was  threatened 
with  arrest  by  his  landlord  because  he  had  orna- 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  57 

mented  the  doorpost  of  his  tenement  with  a  piece 
of  beautiful  wood  carving.  The  Italian  was  very 
much  astonished  at  this  result  of  his  attempt  to  make 
his  home  more  beautiful.  He  could  not  understand 
why  his  landlord  did  not  like  it;  he  said  that  he 
had  carved  a  reredos  in  a  church  in  Naples,  which 
Americans  came  to  look  at  and  which  they  thought 
was  very  beautiful;  the  man  was  naturally  bewil- 
dered by  the  contrast  between  the  appreciation  of  his 
work  in  Naples  and  Chicago.  And  yet  we  need  noth- 
ing more  in  America  than  that  same  tendency  to 
make  beautiful  the  surroundings  of  our  common  life. 
The  man's  skill  was  a  very  precious  thing,  and  ought 
to  have  been  conserved  and  utilized  in  our  American 
life.  The  Italians  in  our  neighborhood  occasionally 
agitate  for  the  erection  of  a  public  wash-house.  They 
do  not  like  to  wash  in  their  own  tenements;  they 
have  never  seen  a  washing  tub  until  they  came  to 
America,  and  find  it  very  difficult  to  use  it  in  the 
restricted  space  of  their  little  kitchens  and  to  hang 
the  clothes  within  the  house  to  dry.  They  say  that 
in  Italy  washing  clothes  is  a  pleasant  task.  In  the 
villages  the  women  all  go  to  the  stream  together; 
in  the  towns,  to  the  public  wash-house,  and  washing, 
instead  of  being  lonely  and  disagreeable,  is  made 
pleasant  by  cheerful  conversation.  It  is  asking 
a  great  deal  of  these  women  to  change  suddenly  all 
their  habits  of  living,  and  their  contention  that  the 
tenement  house  kitchen  is  too  small  for  laundry  work 
is  well  taken.  If  women  in  Chicago  knew  the  needs  of 


58  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

the  Italian  colony  and  were  conversant  with  their  liv- 
ing in  Italy,  they,  too,  would  agitate  for  the  erection 
of  public  wash-houses  for  the  use  of  Italian  women. 
Anything  that  would  bring  cleanliness  and  fresh 
clothing  into  the  Italian  households  would  be  a  very 
sensible  and  hygienic  measure.  It  is,  perhaps,  ask- 
ing a  great  deal  that  the  members  of  the  city  council 
should  understand  this,  but  surely  a  comprehension 
of  the  needs  of  these  women  and  efforts  towards 
ameliorating  their  lot  might  be  regarded  as  a  matter 
of  conscientious  duty  on  the  part  of  American  women. 
One  constantly  sees  also,  in  the  Italian  colony, 
that  sad  break  between  the  customs  of  the  older  people 
and  their  children,  who,  because  they  have  learned 
English  and  certain  American  ways,  come  to  be  half 
ashamed  of  their  parents.  It  does  not  make  for  good 
Americans  that  the  children  should  thus  cut  them- 
selves away  from  the  European  past.  If  the  reverse 
could  be  brought  about ;  if  the  children,  by  some 
understanding  of  the  past,  could  assist  their  parents 
in  making  the  transition  to  American  habits  and  cus- 
toms, it  would  be  most  valuable  from  both  points 
of  view.  An  Italian  girl  who  has  gone  to  the  public 
school  and  has  had  lessons  in  cooking  and  the  house- 
hold arts,  will  help  her  mother  much  more  and  con- 
nect the  entire  family  with  American  foods  and  house- 
hold habits  more  easily,  if  she  understands  her 
mother's  Italian  experiences.  That  the  mother  has 
never  baked  bread  in  Italy — only  mixed  it  in  her 
own  house,  and  then  taken  it  out  to  the  village  oven — 


Conscience  and  Social  Amelioration  59 

makes  it  all  the  more  necessary  that  her  daughter 
should  understand  the  complication  of  a  cooking  stove 
and  introduce  her  to  its  mysteries.  At  the  same  time, 
the  daughter  and  her  American  teacher  could  get 
something  of  the  historic  sense  and  background  in 
the  long  line  of  woman's  household  work  by  knowing 
this  primitive  woman  and  learning  from  her  some 
of  the  old  recipes  and  methods  which  have  been  pre- 
served among  the  simplest  people  because  of  their 
worth.  Take  the  girl  who  learns  to  sew  in  the  public 
school,  whose  Italian  mother  is  able  to  spin  with 
the  old  stick  spindle,  reaching  back  to  the  period  of 
Homer  and  David;  who  knows  how  to  weave  and 
to  make  her  own  loom;  such  a  girl's  mother  could 
bring  a  most  valuable  background  into  a  schoolroom 
over-filled  with  machine-made  products,  often  shoddy 
and  meaningless.  As  the  old  crafts  may  be  recovered 
from  a  foreign  colony  and  used  for  the  edification 
of  our  newer  cities,  so  it  is  possible  to  recover  some- 
thing of  the  arts.  We  have  in  Hull  House  a  music 
school  in  which  some  of  the  foreign-born  children 
have  been  pupils  for  twelve  years.  These  children 
often  discover  in  the  neighboring  foreign  colonies  old 
folk  songs  which  have  never  been  reduced  to  writing. 
The  music  school  reproduces  these  songs  and  invites 
the  older  people  to  hear  them ;  their  pleasure  at  such 
a  concert  is  quite  touching  as  they  hear  the  familiar 
melodies  connecting  them  with  their  earliest  experi- 
ences, reminiscent  perhaps  of  their  parents  and 
grandparents. 


60  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

After  all,  what  is  the  function  of  art  but  to 
preserve  in  permanent  and  beautiful  form  those  emo- 
tions and  solaces  which  cheer  life,  make  it  kindlier 
and  more  comprehensible,  lift  the  mind  of  the  worker 
from  the  harshness  of  his  task,  and,  by  connecting 
him  with  what  has  gone  before,  free  him  from  a 
sense  of  isolation  and  hardship  ?  Many  American 
women  of  education  are  beginning  to  feel  a  sense  of 
obligation  for  work  of  this  sort.  If  women  have 
been  responsible  in  any  sense  for  that  gentler  side 
of  life  which  softens  and  blurs  some  of  the  condi- 
tions of  life,  then  certainly  they  have  a  duty  to  per- 
form in  the  large  foreign  colonies  which  make  up 
so  large  a  part  of  the  American  cities.  I  am  sure 
illustrations  occur  to  all  of  you  as  to  what  might 
be  done  in  this  third  line  of  responsibility,  for,  what- 
ever we  think  as  to  a  woman's  fitness  to  secure  better- 
ment through  legal  enactment,  we  must  agree  that 
responsibility  for  social  standards  has  always  been 
hers. 

In  closing,  may  I  recapitulate  that  if  woman 
would  fulfill  her  traditional  responsibility  to  her  own 
children ;  if  she  would  educate  and  protect  from  dan- 
ger the  children  in  the  community,  who  now  work 
in  factories  although  they  formerly  worked  in  house- 
holds; if  she  would  in  any  sense  meet  the  difficul- 
ties which  modern  immigration  has  brought  us ;  then 
she  must  be  concerned  to  push  her  conscience  into 
the  general  movements  for  social  amelioration. 


Ill 

SOME  ETHICAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE 
LABOR  MOVEMENT 

CHAELES  PATRICK  NEILL,  PH.  D., 
Commissioner  of  Labor  of  the  United  States. 


III. 


SOME  ETHICAL  ASPECTS  OF  THE  LABOR 
MOVEMENT. 

BY  the  labor  movement,  as  I  am  using  the  term 
in  this  discussion,  is  meant  those  collective  efforts 
which  wage-earners  are  making  through  the  sys- 
tematic organization  of  craftiS  or  of  industries  to 
secure  control  of  the  amount  of  wages  they  will  re- 
ceive, the  hours  they  will  work,  and  the  conditions 
under  which  they  will  perform  their  labor. 

In  a  wider  sense,  the  propaganda  for  Socialism 
is  itself  a  phase  of  the  labor  movement;  but  for  our 
present  purposes,  and  merely  for  the  sake  of  con- 
venience, by  the  labor  movement  let  us  understand 
simply  that  movement  which  is  embodied  in  the  or- 
ganization of  wage-earners  into  trade  unions  or  in- 
dustrial unions. 

This  labor  movement  that  we  have  just  defined 
is  now  and  has  been  for  some  time  past  looming  very 
large  on  the  social  horizon.  In  one  form  or  another 
its  influence  is  being  felt  in  almost  every  social  re- 
lation. 

Indeed,  I  suppose  there  are  very,  very  few  of 
us  who  have  not  had  its  existence — and  probably  its 

63 


64  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

inconveniences,  if  not  exasperations — brought  home 
to  us  so  directly  that  we  have  given  it  some  energetic, 
and  possibly  heated,  thought,  and  have  probably 
formed  some  decided  judgment  concerning  it. 

But  unfortunately,  in  far  too  many  cases,  the  fact 
that  one  has  passed  conclusive  judgment  upon  the 
labor  movement  does  not  at  all  imply  that  he  has  in 
the  least  understood  it. 

Because  of  the  fact  that  the  movement  itself  is 
aggressively  militant,  most  of  those  without  its  pale 
have  its  existence  brought  to  their  attention  most 
frequently  through  its  concrete  manifestations  of  an 
uglier  or  a  more  violent  sort.  They  accordingly 
understand  it  in  a  narrow  sense,  and  judge  it  from 
partial  knowledge  and  in  a  somewhat  angry  frame 
of  mind.  „ 

The  various  current  views  of  the  labor  movement 
run  quite  a  gamut.  At  one  end  of  the  scale  we  have 
the  views  of  a  large  group  of  employers  whose  busi- 
ness has  been  very  much  interfered  with  and  ham- 
pered by  labor  unions — and  possibly  in  many  cases 
very  unfairly  and  unreasonably  so — and  who  believe 
and  proclaim  that  "trade  unionism"  spells  ruin  to 
our  industries,  destruction  to  our  free  institutions; 
that  it  is,  in  fact,  treason  of  the  most  brazen  and  in- 
tolerable form. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  we  have  the  view 
of  a  school  of  sympathetic  students  represented  by 
Professor  Ely,  who  thus  expresses  himself: 

"The  labor  movement,  then,  in  its  broadest  terms, 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     65 

is  the  effort  of  men  to  live  the  life  of  men.  It  is 
the  systematic,  organized  struggle  of  the  masses  to 
attain  primarily  more  leisure  and  larger  economic 
resources;  but  that  is  not  by  any  means  all,  because 
the  end  and  purpose  of  it  all  is  a  richer  existence  for 
the  toilers,  and  that  with  respect  to  mind,  soul,  and 
body.  Half  conscious  though  it  may  be,  ^he  labor 
movement  is  a  force  pushing  on  towards  the  attain- 
ment of  the  purpose  of  humanity;  in  other  words, 
the  end  of  the  true  growth  of  mankind ;  namely,  the 
full  and  harmonious  development  in  each  individual 
of  all  human  faculties — the  faculties  of  working,  per- 
ceiving, knowing,  loving — the  development,  in  short, 
of  whatever  capabilities  of  good  there  may  be  in  us. 
And  this  development  of  human  powers  in  the  in- 
dividual is  not  to  be  entirely  for  self,  but  it  is  to 
be  for  the  sake  of  their  beneficent  use  in  the  service 
of  one's  fellows  in  a  Christian  civilization.  It  is  for 
self  and  for  others.  It  is  the  realization  of  the 
ethical  aim  expressed  in  that  command  which  con- 
tains the  secret  of  all  true  progress,  'Thou  shalt  love* 
thy  neighbor  as  thyself.'  It  is  directed  against  op* 
i  pression  in  every  form,  because  oppression  carries 

\with  it  the  idea  that  persons  or  classes  live  not  to 
fulfill  a  destiny  of  their  own,  but  primarily  and 
I  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  the  welfare  of  other  persons 
1  or  classes.     The  true  significance  of  the  labor  move- 
ment, on  the  contrary,  lies  in  this:  It  is  an  attempt 
to  bring  to  pass  the   idea  of  human   development 
which  has  animated  sages,  prophets,  and  poets  of  all 
5 


66  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

ages ;  the  idea  that  a  time  must  come  when  warfare 
of  all  kinds  shall  cease,  and  when  a  peaceful  or- 
ganization of  society  shall  find  a  place  within  its 
framework  for  the  best  growth  of  each  personality, 
and  shall  abolish  all  servitude  in  which  one  'but 
subserves  another's  gain.' 

"The  labor  movement  represents  mankind  as  it 
is  represented  by  no  other  manifestation  of  the  life 
of  the  nations  of  the  earth,  because  the  vast  majority 
of  the  race  are  laborers."  (Ely,  pages  3  and  4.) 

Fitting  in  somewhere  between  these  opposing 
views — precisely  where  I  should  not  like  to  be  called 
upon  to  say — are  some  other  views  of  the  labor  move- 
ment held  by  very  considerable  numbers.  One  re- 
cent essayist,  a  lawyer  by  profession,  thus  describes 
the  view  that  he  has  found  quite  common,  and  which 
at  least  has  the  merit  of  simplicity : 

"To  the  large  public  of  the  well-fed  who  live 
by  their  wits  and  not  by  the  direct  application  of 
physical  labor,  the  grumbling  of  the  laborer  against 
the  law  seems  delightfully  simple.  To  this  public 
the  whole  grievance  of  labor,  spelled  with  a  capital, 
is  that  the  law  forbids  the  heaving  of  bricks  at 
scabs." 

Still  another  view,  neither  so  depressing  as  the 
one  that  sees  only  treason  and  menace  in  unionism, 
nor  so  inspiring  as  the  view  of  Professor  Ely,  but 
a  view  comforting  to  its  possessors  and  flattering  to 
their  belief  in  their  own  judicial  temperament  and 
sense  of  fairness,  is  represented  in  a  considerable  class 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     67 

who  express  a  very  cordial,  although  very  abstract, 
approval  of  labor  unions,  and  believe  that  they  be- 
lieve in  them,  but  who,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  dis- 
approve in  the  concrete  practically  everything  vital 
for  which  a  labor  union  stands.  An  excellent  illus- 
tration is  thus  given  by  John  Graham  Brooks,  in 
"Social  Unrest:" 

"One  of  the  grandees  in  the  business  world,  who 
has  publicly  insisted  upon  'the  rights  of  labor  to 
organize/  was  asked  in  my  hearing  if  he  were  favor- 
able to  trade  unionism.  'Yes,'  he  said,  'I  have  al- 
ways been  its  friend,  but  of  course  the  union  must 
be  taught  its  proper  place.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  employer's  business.  If  it  dictates,  it  is  out  of 
its  sphere.  It  ought  to  confine  itself  to  mutual  help- 
fulness, burial  funds,  and  the  like.'  Of  this  kind 
of  good-will  to  organized  labor  employers  have 
abundance,  yet  it  may  conceal  an  absolute  and  settled 
aversion  to  every  real  object  for  which  the  trade 
union  stands.  This  gentleman  had  an  honest  loathing 
for  actual  trade  union  when  it  gained  strength  enough 
to  offer  him  the  alternative  of  arbitration  or  of  a 
strike.  He  had  an  imagined  affection  for  a  lady- 
like association  which  'knew  its  place ;'  that  is,  which 
never  questioned  his  own  absolute  dictatorship.  He 
was  fond  of  saying:  'There  is  no  place  for  arbitra- 
tion in  my  works,  because  I  pay  all  that  the  business 
will  afford.  If  they  ask  me  to  arbitrate,  it  is  like 
taking  me  by  the  throat.  With  a  highwayman  there 
can  be  no  arbitration.'  " 


68  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

To  have  any  adequate  comprehension  of  the  real 
nature  of  the  labor  movement  as  it  exists  about  us 
to-day,  or  any  comprehension  of  the  phenomena  which 
accompany  it,  one  must  first  get  some  appreciation 
of  the  spirit  that  lies  behind  it,  the  spirit  that  first 
gave  it  life  and  being  and  that  still  informs  and 
vitalizes  it. 

For  this  understanding  of  the  movement  it  is 
necessary  that  we  once  get  a  definite  view  of  it 
against  a  certain  historical  background,  without  which 
it  has  no  meaning. 

Those  without  the  movement  rarely  ever  have 
any  historical  comprehension  of  it;  but  the  leaders 
and  the  more  intelligent  of  those  within  the  move- 
ment usually  have  a  very  clear  concept  of  its  his- 
torical significance,  and  even  the  dumbest  of  the  rank 
and  file  have  an  instinctive  appreciation  of  the  role 
that  they  are  playing. 

The  most  of  us  realize  that  this  labor  movement 
is  a  world-wide  movement,  but  we  do  not  realize  that 
it  is  a  world-old  one.  Yet  this  is  the  keynote  to  the 
whole  subject,  and  until  we  do  understand  this,  we 
can  not  correctly  gauge  any  other  aspect  of  it. 

It  is  only  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  century 
phase  of  a  struggle  that  is  far  more  than  twenty 
centuries  old. 

It  is  a  struggle  that  has  gone  on  persistently 
since  the  beginnings  of  the  political  history  of  so- 
ciety— a  ceaseless  and  endless  conflict — going  back 
to  the  first  efforts  of  the  subjugated  and  disfranchised 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     69 

to  overthrow  oppression,  to  sweep  away  privilege,  and 
coming  down  to  the  present  struggle  to  secure  com- 
plete equality  of  opportunity  for  all  men  alike  to 
work  out  their  highest  individual  destinies,  and  for 
each  to  live  the  deepest,  the  fullest,  the  richest  life 
possible,  and  to  develop  to  the  fullest  all  the  capaci- 
ties with  which  his  Creator  may  have  endowed  him. 

It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  early  struggle  of  the 
human  chattel  to  free  himself  from  a  degrading 
bondage  which  ranked  him  with  the  ox  and  the  ass 
as  a  mere  beast  of  burden  down  to  a  modern  trade 
union  conducting  a  strike  for  a  higher  wage  or 
shorter  hours  per  day. 

But  they  are  both  scenes  in  the  one  continuous 
process  of  social  evolution  by  which  we  have  passed 
from  the  abject  slavery  of  the  earlier  historical  civi- 
lizations into  the  democracy  of  the  Western  world 
of  to-day. 

At  each  successive  phase  in  that  evolution  the 
characters  change,  the  stage  setting  looks  new  and 
strange;  but  the  essential  plot  remains  unchanged — 
the  dominant  motif  remains  the  same. 

To  each  age  the  struggle  seems  local  and  even 
sordid,  but,  viewed  in  the  historical  retrospect,  it 
takes  on  that  higher  interest  and  nobler  dignity  that 
mark  the  sweep  of  the  great  forces  which  have  en- 
dured through  the  centuries  and  carried  humanity 
onward  in  its  progression. 

Let  us  now  for  a  moment  review  certain  aspects 
of  that  progress  and  note  certain  epoch-marking 


70  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

changes  that  have  a  special  significance  for  our  dis- 
cussion. 

Going  back  to  the  earliest  stages  of  historical 
society,  we  find  the  institution  of  slavery,  the  founda- 
tion stone  of  the  whole  political  and  social  structure 
of  the  ancient  world.  In  this  institution  we  have 
the  fullest  and  most  complete,  as  well  as  the  frankest, 
recognition  of  the  principle  that  has  been  funda- 
mental in  the  social  and  political  structure  of  the 
Western  world  for  by  far  the  greatest  part  of  its 
history. 

This  principle  was  the  accepted  idea  that  certain 
"persons  or  classes  live,  not  to  fulfill  a  destiny  of 
their  own,  but  primarily  and  chiefly  for  the  sake 
of  the  welfare  of  other  persons  or  classes." 

Slavery  as  an  institution,  let  me  repeat,  represents 
the  fullest  and  frankest  embodiment  of  this  idea. 

The  other  extreme  in  social  institutions  is  repre- 
sented in  the  ideal  of  democracy — a  society  in  which 
no  hereditary  differences  of  rank  or  privilege  are 
recognized,  into  which  every  man  is  born  free,  and 
in  which  there  shall  exist  for  every  individual  the 
fullest  opportunity  for  self-development. 

These  two  social  states,  slavery  and  democracy, 
stand  for  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  political  progress. 

The  first  represents  the  starting-point  at  which 
we  find  organized  society  at  the  dawn  of  authentic 
history.  The  other  represents  the  ideal  towards 
which  society  on  the  whole  has  been  tending  ever 
since,  steadily,  ceaselessly,  resistlessly,  with  many 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     71 

twistings  and  turnings  and  with  some  backward  ebbs, 
but  in  the  larger  view  always  forging  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  goal. 

We  are  still  far  from  the  attainment  of  the  true 
ideal  of  democracy,  but  we  are  nearer  to  it  than 
we  have  ever  been  before. 

The  institution  of  serfdom  which  succeeded 
slavery  represents  in  the  concrete  a  very  considerable 
advance  in  human  freedom,  but  so  far  as  concerns 
the  theory  that  underlay  alike  the  institution  of 
slavery  an.d  serfdom,  it  represents  no  such  corre- 
sponding advance. 

The  difference  in  social  theory  between  the  two 
is  a  difference  in  degree  rather  than  in  kind.  In 
serfdom  the  human  being  was  no  longer  a  personal 
chattel  to  be  bought  and  sold,  and  eventually  the 
serf  came  to  have,  even  against  his  lord,  a  claim  to 
his  land  and  his  lodging  so  long  as  he  rendered  his 
customary  duties. 

But  the  serf  was  attached  to  the  soil ;  he  belonged 
to  a  given  estate,  and  passed  from  master  to  master 
with  each  transfer  of  that  estate,  the  same  as  the 
soil  itself  or  the  fixtures  upon  it.  The  estate,  upon 
the  produce  of  which  the  lord  relied  for  his  support 
and  his  comfort,  was  useless  without  the  labor  of  the 
serf.  The  serf  must  therefore  remain  and  give  his 
toil  to  whatsoever  owner  the  land  belonged,  and  in 
every  way  subordinate  his  own  welfare  to  that  of 
his  lord. 

And  the  same  principle  applied  to  the  members 


72  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

of  his  family.  His  daughter,  for  example,  might 
not  marry,  or  his  son  study  for  the  Church,  without 
the  lord's  consent;  for  these  were  valuable  additions 
to  the  force  which  tilled  and  rendered  fruitful  the 
estate ;  and  the  working  out  of  their  own  lives  or  the 
fulfilling  of  their  own  destinies  were  subordinate  con- 
sideration to  the  comfort  and  well-being  of  the  lord. 

This  was,  of  course,  merely  the  continued  recog- 
nition of  the  same  principle  that  underlay  the  earlier 
and  grosser  forms  of  slavery. 

The  next  advance  from  serfdom  towards  freedom, 
like  the  one  from  slavery  to  serfdom,  represents  a 
concrete  change  in  both  economic  and  political  status 
which  is  not  accompanied  by  an  equal  change  in  the 
current  social  philosophy. 

Thus,  when  the  Black  Death  swept  over  England 
in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  and  carried 
off  probably  one-half  of  the  working  population,  a 
situation  at  once  arose  that  caused  the  current  social 
philosophy  of  that  age  promptly  to  reflect  itself  in 
legislation. 

By  that  date  there  had  been  a  considerable  ad- 
vance towards  actual  freedom,  and  a  class  of  wage- 
earners  had  arisen  distinct  from  the  serfs.  In  the 
great  scarcity  of  labor  resulting  from  the  plague,  the 
lords  of  the  manors  began  to  bid  against  one  an- 
other for  hired  hands  to  till  their  estates,  and  wages 
began  rapidly  to  rise.  A  golden  era  seemed  about 
to  dawn  upon  the  wage-earning  class. 

But  higher  wages  meant  a  greater  share  in  the 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     73 

wealth  of  the  soil  and  a  correspondingly  less  share 
for  the  lord  of  the  estate.  The  prosperity  of  the 
wage-earner  would  thus  have  been  at  the  expense  of 
the  comfort  of  his  lord  and  was,  therefore,  not  to 
be  permitted.  Such  a  change  in  the  existing  order, 
such  a  readjustment  of  the  social  scale  were  not  to 
be  thought  of  in  the  philosophy  of  the  ruling  classes 
of  the  fourteenth  century. 

Straightway  drastic  laws  were  passed  to  force 
the  wage-earners  back  to  their  former  economic  status. 
These  statutes  regulating  wages  and  attempting 
rigidly  to  fix  the  economic  status  of  laborers  were 
enacted  first  in  1350,  and  re-enacted  and  re-enacted 
with  increasing  severity  in  the  determined  effort  to 
force  the  wage-earner  back  into  what  was  practically 
the  status  of  serfdom  from  which  he  had  emerged. 

These  statutes  fixed  wages  at  what  they  were 
before  the  plague  had  swept  over  England. 

Laborers  going  from  one  county  to  another  to 
seek  higher  wages  than  could  be  secured  in  their 
own  neighborhood  were  sent  to  jail. 

Laborers  away  from  their  customary  place  of  em- 
ployment without  a  written  testimonal  explaining 
the  reason  for  such  absence  and  fixing  the  time  of 
their  return  to  their  regular  employment  were  put 
in  the  stocks  until  they  gave  surety  for  their  return 
to  their  employer. 

Laborers  leaving  the  service  of  one  employer  with- 
out his  consent  to  take  employment  under  another 
for  a  higher  wage  were  outlawed  and  imprisoned, 


74  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

and  might  even  be  branded  on  the  forehead  in  the 
discretion  of  the  justice  of  the  peace. 

Here  was  almost  as  frank  a  recogniton  of  the 
right  of  one  class  to  prosper  at  the  expense  of  the 
other  as  was  reflected  in  the  slavery  of  a  thousand 
years  earlier. 

It  is  true  it  did  not  recognize  the  property  right 
in  the  person  of  another,  as  slavery  had  done ;  it  did 
not  recognize  the  sole  and  permanent  property  right 
of  one  individual  in  another  man's  labor,  and  the 
right  to  sell  or  transfer  that  other's  labor  at  will; 
but  it  did  recognize  the  right  of  one  group,  as  a 
group,  to  the  labor  of  another  group  upon  fixed  and 
definite  terms  and  conditions,  which  terms  and  con- 
ditions were  determined  solely  by  the  needs  and 
wishes  of  the  employing  group. 

It  is  the  persistent  recognition  of  the  old  idea 
of  the  right  of  one  class  of  men  to  live  their  lives 
at  the  expense  of  another  class  and  completely  sub- 
ordinate the  destinies  of  that  class  to  their  own. 

In  the  middle  part  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
older  principle  seems  to  be  passing  away.  The 
poverty  of  the  working  class  had  become  so  dire 
as  to  touch  the  heart  of  the  Elizabethan  legislator, 
and  the  celebrated  statute  of  1563  was  passed  ap- 
parently for  the  welfare  of  the  wage-earner. 

The  statute  is  noteworthy,  for  it  apparently  marks 
a  turning  point  in  English  labor  legislation.  All 
previous  statutes  dealing  with  laborers  had  been 
frankly  and  brutally  in  the  interest  of  the  landed 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     75 

employer,  but  the  preamble  of  this  statute  "shows 
a  tender  concern  for  the  welfare  of  the  laborer,  and 
expresses  a  fear  that  his  wages  may  occasionally  be 
too  low." 

By  this  statute  the  wages  of  labor  were  left  to 
be  fixed  by  the  justices  of  the  peace  in  quarter  ses- 
sions, and  both  the  employers  and  employed  were 
bound  under  heavy  penalties  to  abide  by  the  rates 
of  wages  thus  fixed. 

But  since  in  actual  practice  the  fixing  of  wages 
was  thus  turned  over  to  what  was  practically  the 
employing  class,  the  interest  in  the  "hired  laborer" 
was  more  nominal  than  real.  If  he  were  not  satis- 
fied with  what  the  solicitude  of  the  justice  of  the 
peace — usually  a  landed  proprietor — might  fix  for 
him  as  a  legal  wage,  and  he  should  enter  into  an 
agreement  with  any  of  his  fellows  to  secure  a  higher 
wage,  he  exposed  himself  to  the  penalty  of  the  pillory 
and  the  loss  of  an  ear. 

This  legal  prohibition  against  combinations  of 
vvorkingmen,  first  enacted  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
remained  on  the  statute  books  of  England  for  five 
centuries,  and  as  late  as  1800,  a  comprehensive  act 
was  passed  penalizing  any  combination  or  association 
of  workmen  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  an  increase 
in  their  wages  or  a  lessening  of  their  hours  of  work. 

It  was  not  until  1824  that  these  conspiracy  laws 
disappeared  from  the  statute  books.  So  long  as  they 
remained  there,  it  can  be  said  that  the  law  continued 
to  recognize  the  right  of  one  class  to  prosper  at  the 


76  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

expense  of  another  and  made  of  the  laborer  the 
pack-horse  of  industry. 

So  near,  indeed,  does  this  come  to  our  own  times 
that  there  are  many  men  still  living  who  were  born 
before  these  laws  disappeared  from  the  statute  books. 

So  long  as  the  economic  condition  of  the  laborer 
was  one  fixed  by  statute,  so  long  as  his  oppression 
was  founded  in  the  law  itself,  the  economic  struggle 
remains  merged  and  lost  in  the  larger  political 
struggle  for  personal  freedom  and  equality  before 
the  law,  and  the  course  of  history  seems  to  mark 
a  political  rather  than  an  economic  progress. 

It  is  only  when  political  freedom  has  been  gained 
that  the  real  economic  aspect  of  the  struggle  be- 
comes clearly  uncovered  and  focuses  attention.  It 
no  longer  appears  as  an  effort  to  overthrow  exist- 
ing political  institutions  or  to  secure  a  larger  measure 
of  political  or  civil  rights.  The  whole  matter,  then, 
stands  forth  clearly  confessed  as  a  class  struggle  over 
the  distribution  of  the  wealth  that  is  being  created. 
The  disguise  of  centuries  has  been  thrown  off,  and 
the  real  character  appears. 

The  question  of  the  distribution  of  wealth  among 
the  various  social  groups  which  co-operate  in  its  pro- 
duction is  not  only  the  very  root  of  our  social  prob- 
lem of  to-day — the  basis  for  the  social  unrest  and 
the  social  struggle  going  on  around  us — but  at  bottom 
it  has  been  the  great  factor  in  social  discontent  since 
the  beginning,  and  the  moving  cause  in  the  social 
struggle  that  has  gone  on  through  the  ages. 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     77 

Economic  spoliation  and  not  political  disfran- 
chisement  has  been  the  real  evil  against  which  the 
masses  have  always  been  struggling.  The  political 
disfranchisement  has  been  merely  the  means  to  ac- 
complish the  other  object. 

Thus,  whether  it  be  by  the  institution  of  slavery 
or  of  serfdom,  or  the  later  forms  of  legal  regulation 
of  the  laborer,  the  real  result  was  to  enable  his  over- 
lord to  appropriate  as  large  a  part  as  possible  of 
the  product  of  the  laborer's  toil. 

It  was  because  this  whole  matter  of  distribution 
was  regulated  by  law  until  practically  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  that  every  protest  against 
the  then  existing  basis  of  distribution — every  effort 
to  change  it — had  to  express  itself  as  an  attempt  to 
reform  or  overturn  an  existing  legal  status. 

The  real  underlying  economic  struggle  could  thus 
only  express  itself  in  terms  of  political  agitation  or 
political  revolt. 

The  nations  of  the  Western  world,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  have  even  now  reached  very  different  stages 
in  this  social  evolution;  in  some  the  toilers  are  still 
fighting  the  preliminary  battle ;  that  is,  the  political 
battle.  In  others  that  battle  has  been  won,  and  we 
are  now  in  the  thick  of  the  economic  battle. 

One  reason  why  the  industrial  conflict  going  on 
about  us  is  both  acute  and  bitter — with  the  proba- 
bilities of  becoming  more  so — is  because  it  represents 
a  conflict  between  opposing  ethical  conceptions,  be- 
tween mutually  exclusive  theories  of  rights.  So  short 


78  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

has  been  the  period  since  our  social  philosophy  held 
and  our  statute  books  reflected  the  view  of  the  ruling 
class  that  the  laborer  had  no  right  to  better  himself 
at  their  expense,  so  recently  has  it  been  believed  that 
concerted  effort  on  the  part  of  wage-earners  to  secure 
a  larger  share  in  the  wealth  of  society  was  a  con- 
spiracy against  the  public  good,  that  many  of  us  have 
not  yet  adapted  ourselves  to  the  newer  view. 

Perhaps  this  is  best  seen  in  the  field  of  domestic 
service.  Recently  in  a  certain  neighborhood  an  or- 
ganization was  formed  of  women  engaged  in  domestic 
service,  and  an  agreement  was  made  among  them  not 
to  work  over  twelve  hours  a  day.  I  heard  a  very 
earnest  and  somewhat  excited  discussion  of  the  sub- 
ject by  a  group  of  their  employers,  in  which  the 
action  of  the  "servants"  was  denounced  as  "absurd/' 
"unheard-of,"  "impertinent,"  "outrageous,"  etc. 

When  it  was  suggested  to  the  employers  that  this 
was  merely  an  effort  on  the  part  of  certain  fellow 
human  beings  to  lessen  their  hours  of  service  and 
obtain  what  they  believed  to  be  entirely  within  their 
rights,  the  reply  was  made  that  it  was  absurd  to 
expect  that  the  necessary  daily  work  of  a  family  could 
be  compressed  within  the  limits  of  twelve  hours.  It 
was  then  suggested  that  it  did  not  necessarily  follow 
that  the  work  of  the  household  was  to  be  done  within 
twelve  hours,  but  that  there  were  two  other  alterna- 
tives: either  that  more  than  one  "servant"  be  em- 
ployed, or  that  in  families  which  could  not  afford 
the  employment  of  more  than  one,  the  work  in  ex- 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     79 

cess  of  twelve  hours  might  be  done  by  members  of 
the  family.  This  suggestion  was  indignantly  repudi- 
ated and  likewise  described  as  "absurd"  and  "out- 
rageous/' and  one  irate  dame  asked  if  it  was  to  be 
seriously  proposed  either  that  her  comfort  and  that 
of  her  family  should  be  sacrificed  to  the  impertinent 
demands  of  a  "servant,"  or  that  she  or  her  daughters 
were  to  do  any  of  the  work  of  a  "servant !" 

Now,  let  us  analyze  this  attitude  of  mind  for 
a  moment,  for  I  think  it  fair  to  say  it  is  wholly 
typical  of  the  mental  attitude  of  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  those  who  are  to-day  employing  domestic 
help.  It  simply  means  this,  that  those  who  are  un- 
able to  employ  more  than  one  household  worker  feel 
that  that  unfortunate  worker  should  sacrifice  the 
greater  part  of  her  waking  time  to  the  comfort  of 
that  family  and  should  be  satisfied  to  accept  this 
status  as  her  proper  and  permanent  role. 

All  this  is  only  a  more  striking  manifestation 
of  the  spirit  represented  by  that  believer  in  unions 
already  quoted  who  insisted  that  they,  must  keep 
in  their  place  and  must  not  attempt  in  any  way 
to  control  the  employer's  business  or  interfere  with 
his  rights.  But  here  is  the  very  crux  of  the  whole 
conflict.  The  employer's  ideas  of  his  rights  and  his 
employee's  ideas  as  to  these  same  rights  are  directly 
opposed  to  one  another. 

The  employer  insists  that  his  business  is  his 
own,  and  that  he  will  brook  no  interference  on  the 


80  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

part  of  his  employees  with  his  idea  of  what  is  best 
in  the  management  of  that  business. 

The  employee  holds  that  the  wages  he  shall  re- 
ceive, the  hours  he  shall  work,  and  the  conditions 
under  which  he  shall  carry  on  that  work  involve  for 
him  the  whole  question,  not  only  of  the  material 
comforts  of  life,  but  of  health  and  of  leisure  for  self- 
development  and  for  opportunities  that  he  can  offer 
to  his  children. 

In  a  word,  most  that  life  holds  dear  for  the 
wage-earner  is  bound  up  in  the  very  things  that 
the  employer  insists  must  be  left  to  his  untrammeled 
management  and  control.  The  wage-earner  is  un- 
alterably determined,  therefore,  that  he  shall  have 
some  say — and  a  great  deal  of  say — as  to  how  the 
employer  shall  manage  that  part  of  his  business 
which  so  vitally  concerns  the  wage-earner's  comfort, 
prosperity,  and  happiness. 

We  may  well  ask  ourselves  whether  the  vast,  com- 
plex, delicate,  and  sensitive  mechanism  of  modern 
industry  and  commerce  can  be  made  to  work  with 
any  effectiveness  if  there  be  constant  interference, 
and  unless  the  management  is  left  free  and  untram- 
meled in  its  control  over  the  entire  machinery.  "Im- 
possible," is  the  answer  of  most  of  those  now  in 
control  of  industry.  But  this  is  the  old,  old  answer 
to  every  demand  for  the  slightest  change  in  our  social 
structure.  Thus,  Aristotle  could  conceive  of  no  other 
possible  successful  form  of  society  than  one  based 
upon  slavery.  In  the  same  way  the  mediaeval  ruling 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     81 

classes  probably  believed  firmly  and  sincerely  that 
a  form  of  society  more  advanced  than  their  own 
was  a  dream  of  a  visionary.  Similarly,  volumes 
could  be  filled  with  impassioned,  forceful,  and  even 
conclusive  argument  that  a  democracy  based  upon 
anything  like  universal  suffrage  was  an  impossibility. 
But  Time,  grim  and  cynical,  has  silently  refuted 
the  logicians  from  Aristotle  onward.  Slavery  has 
vanished,  serfdom  is  a  memory,  and  a  democratic 
society  based  upon  practically  universal  suffrage  is 
here. 

It  may  be  argued  that  after  all  democracy  is 
working  badly.  It  requires  no  unusual  intelligence 
to  see  or  to  point  out  its  weaknesses  or  its  failures, 
and  yet  it  is  equally  true  that  it  is  working  far 
better  on  the  whole  than  any  social  system  the  world 
has  ever  known  before. 

In  brief}  progress  merely  represents  the  overcom- 
ing of  the  impossible.  In  politics  as  in  physics 
the  impossible  of  one  age  becomes  un  fait  accompli 
of  the  succeeding  age  and  soon  loses  even  its  novelty 
and  becomes  accepted  as  quite  the  ordinary  thing. 

It  may  be  argued  that  business  can  not  be  run 
as  easily  as  government  is  run;  that  industry  could 
not  long  tolerate  such  poor  direction  and  manage- 
ment as  we  daily  see  in  government.  Those  who 
hold  this  view  may  even  be  able  to  point  out  cases 
of  interference  with  business  on  the  part  of  wage- 
earners  which  has  been  arbitrary,  unreasonable,  and 
destructive,  not  only  to  a  single  business  enterprise, 
6 


82  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

but  even  to  a  whole  industry  in  a  given  locality. 
All  this  could  be  admitted,  and  yet  it  would  be  of 
slight  consequence  in  the  larger  view  of  the  argu- 
ment. 

Through  the  process  of  organization  of  wage- 
earners  and  collective  bargaining,  a  school  of  train- 
ing is  created  that  in  the  long  run  will  fit  the 
wage-earner  for  his  part  in  the  newer  system  and 
bring  to  the  front  the  most  competent  leadership, 
just  as  the  actual  experiment  of  democracy  develops 
the  traits  that  are  necessary  for  its  success. 

It  is  frequently  said  that  if  all  unions  were  like 
this  or  that  particular  one,  or  if  all  labor  leaders 
were  of  the  type  of  this  or  that  particular  leader, 
much  more  might  be  done  in  the  way  of  joint  con- 
tracts and  of  giving  the  wage-earner  a  larger  say 
in  the  conditions  under  which  he  will  work.  I  htive 
heard  organizations  and  individuals  thus  spoken  of 
with  approval  which  at  an  earlier  period,  and,  in 
some  instances,  even  within  my  own  recollection, 
were  regarded  as  radical  and  dangerous.  I  recall 
one  particular  labor  leader,  now  dead,  who,  by  those 
who  knew  him  only  in  his  later  years,  was  regarded 
as  a  model  of  what  a  labor  leader  should  be.  In 
his  earlier  career  this  same  man  was  the  type  de- 
scribed as  a  fire-brand.  In  the  labor  world,  as  every- 
where else,  the  rule  holds  good  that  responsibility 
sobers  men,  that  reverses  chasten  them,  and  that  ex- 
perience educates  them.  As  a  rule,  the  most  con- 
servative unions  are  the  older  unions,  and  although 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     83 

in  many  instances  the  newer  leaders  may  seem  to 
be  abler  than  some  of  the  older  ones,  it  is  only 
because  they  have  begun  with  the  heritage  of  ex- 
perience garnered  through  the  efforts  and  struggles 
of  their  predecessors. 

But  the  strongest  reason  why  a  system  of  in- 
dustry in  which  the  wage-earner  shall  have  more 
say  in  that  part  of  the  management  which  affects 
his  wages,  hours,  and  conditions  of  work  is  not  im- 
possible of  attainment,  is  that  such  a  system  has 
got  to  be  attained. 

The  age-long  struggle  for  the  lightening  of  the' 
burden  of  the  toilers,  for  a  larger  share  in  the  wealth 
of  society,  and  for  a  higher  and  better  standard  of 
living  is  not  going  to  cease,  and  a  system  must  be 
devised  which  will  come  nearer  to  meeting  the  de- 
mands of  the  laboring  masses  than  the  existing  one. 

The  problem  is  a  large  one,  and  steadily  grows 
larger  and  more  acute,  but  we  must  either  develop 
a  satisfactory  process  by  which,  through  some  form 
of  trade  unionism  and  collective  bargaining,  the  bur- 
dens of  industry  shall  be  lightened  and  the  wealth 
constantly  created  by  the  joint  toil  of  brain  and  arm 
shall  be  more  widely  distributed  amongst  those  who 
co-operate  in  its  production,  or  we  shall  find  our- 
selves face  to  face  with  the  menace  of  Socialism  in 
one  form  or  another.  We  may  scoff  at  the  fear  of 
Socialism  and  assert  that  it  can  not  thrive  in 
America.  Socialism  has  not  thrived  here  as  yet  as 
in  other  countries,  but  this  constitutes  no  guarantee 


84  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

that  its  history  here  will  not  be  a  repetition  of  its 
history  in  the  countries  of  the  older  world. 

There  are  numerous  causes  why  Socialism  has 
not  made  greater  headway  in  the  United  States  than 
it  has,  but  one  of  the  chief  elements  in  retarding 
its  growth  here  has  been  the  success  which  the  trade 
union  movement  has  achieved. 

The  professed  object  of  Socialism  is  to  ameliorate 
the  condition  of  the  wage-earner,  and  the  strength 
of  its  appeal  for  support  lies  in  its  power  to  point 
out  in  the  concrete  conditions  of  industry  which  press 
with  crushing  weight  upon  those  who  toil  with  their 
hands.  In  the  same  way,  the  strength  of  the  appeal 
that  the  organized  labor  movement  makes  to  the 
worker  lies  in  the  concrete  successes  that  it  has 
achieved  in  remedying  his  conditions.  In  many  trades 
short  hours,  high  wages,  and  good  working  conditions 
have  been  secured  by  complete  organization,  and  the 
daily  evidence  of  this  success  serves  to  stimulate  the 
other  less  fortunate  crafts  to  organize  and  to  keep 
alive  the  hope  that  they  in  time  will  achieve  a  large 
share  of  that  same  success.  The  trade  union  move- 
ment represents  the  belief  that  far  better  conditions 
are  entirely  possible  under  the  existing  order,  while 
Socialism  represents  the  despair  of  any  struggle  made 
to  better  the  lot  of  the  wage-earner  under  the  exist- 
ing system  and  demands  the  complete  overthrow  of 
that  system  and  its  replacement  by  an  entirely  new 
social  structure. 

Let  the  trade  union  movement  cease  to  expand, 


Ethical  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Movement     85 

let  its  success  in  having  a  voice  in  the  management 
of  industry  through  collective  bargaining  grow  less 
and  less,  let  its  power  to  better  the  conditions  of  the 
wage-earner  appear  to  have  reached  its  limit  or  to 
be  on  the  wane;  in  a  word,  let  trade  unionism  con- 
fess its  inability  to  continue  to  bring  the  hosts  of 
labor  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  goal  for  which  they 
have  been  struggling  through  the  long  centuries,  and 
the  propaganda  for  Socialism  will  gain  an  impetus 
which  will  transform  it  into  a  real  peril. 


IV 

INDUSTRY  AND  RELIGION :  THEIR 
COMMON  GROUND  AND  IN- 
TERDEPENDENCE 

GRAHAM  TAYLOR, 

Professor  of  Social  Economics,  Chicago  Theological  Semi- 
nary ;  Director  of  the  Chicago  School  of  Civics 
and  Philanthropy. 


IV 


INDUSTRY  AND  RELIGION:    THEIR  COM- 
MON GROUND  AND  INTERDEPEND- 
ENCE 

INDUSTRY  and  religion,  with  education,  state  and 
solve  the  problem  of  human  life  when  on  common 
ground.  Apart,  much  more  in  antagonism,  they 
prove  existence  to  be  a  tragedy.  For  what  is  in- 
dustry? In  human  terms,  it  is  the  base-line,  the 
rootage,  the  very  condition  of  existence.  And  re- 
ligion, with  education,  is  the  sky-line,  the  atmos- 
phere, the  horizon  of  life,  which  makes  it  more  than 
meat  and  the  body  more  than  raiment,  and  without 
which  life  is  not  worth  the  living. 

Now,  apart  from  religion  and  education,  and  the 
human  value  with  which  they  invest  toil,  its  process, 
and  its  product,  we  have  a  body  without  a  soul,  lungs 
without  any  air  to  breathe,  eyes  without  any  light 
to  see  through,  earth  without  atmosphere  or  sky.  On 
the  other  hand,  religion  and  education  without  in- 
dustry give  us  only  disembodied  spirit,  life  on  earth 
without  the  conditions  of  an  earthly  existence. 

Throughout  this  discussion  we  have  in  mind  the 
essentials  of  industry  and  religion,  not  their  organi- 

89 


90  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

zations.  We  are  considering  their  over-arching  ideals 
and  their  under-girding  motives,  which  hold  the  con- 
stituency of  each  together;  not  the  Church  or  other 
ecclesiastical  expressions  of  organized  religion,  not 
the  organizations  of  either  employing  capital  or  em- 
ployed labor.  As  such,  then,  have  religion  and  in- 
dustry anything  in  common  ?  What  have  they  to  do 
with  each  other  ?  Is  there  any  common  ground 
where  they  can,  and  ought,  and  must  stand  together, 
if  these  two  essential  functions  and  ideals  of  human 
life  are  to  fulfill  their  part  in  the  order  of  exist- 
ence? 

In  the  foreground  of  our  discussion  lies  the  por- 
tentous fact  that  the  religions  of  the  Western  world 
are  entering  the  second  industrial  century  of  human 
history.  What  that  means  we  have  scarcely  begun 
to  imagine.  But  the  first  century  of  modern  industry 
stands  in  the  clear.  The  nineteenth  century  was 
ushered  into  the  history  by  the  whir  of  the  power- 
loom,  which  had  then  just  fairly  got  to  work.  When 
the  hand-loom  ceased  to  beat  the  measured  tread  of 
all  the  centuries  gone  by,  and  the  power-loom  began 
to  set  the  pace  of  modern  life,  then  medievalism 
ended  and  times  altogether  new  began.  So  much 
more  rapid  and  radical  than  any  other  change 
through  which  civilization  has  ever  passed  was  the 
transformation  wrought  by  the  introduction  of  ma- 
chinery, the  concentration  of  capital,  the  establish- 
ment of  the  competitive  order,  and  the  subdivision 
and  organization  of  labor,  that  the  appearance  of 


Industry  and  Religion  91 

these  new  factors  among  men  is  recognized  as  "the 
industrial  revolution."  More  than  anything  else 
which  had  yet  been  introduced  into  the  world,  they 
began  to  weave  human  life  itself,  not  only  into  a 
new  pattern,  but  into  a  new  texture.  In  less  than 
thirty  years  the  new  machinery  virtually  revolution- 
ized the  world's  life  and  began  to  change  the  very 
face  of  the  earth. 

We  are  far  enough  away  from  that  abrupt  break 
with  the  past  to  inquire  whither  we  are  being  borne 
on  the  still  rising  tides  of  the  new  times.  Whither 
away  is  modern  industrialism  bearing  human  life 
upon  its  resistless  streams  of  tendency?  From  the 
course  it  took  through  its  first  hundred  years,  we 
can  discern  at  least  the  direction  of  the  channels 
through  which  its  swift  and  tumultuous  tendencies 
are  forging  their  way  into  the  times  that  are  to  be. 

With  the  French  Kevolution  the  individual 
began  to  gain  a  new  independence.  That  mighty 
revolt  against  the  order  of  life  which  had  for  cen- 
turies merged  the  one  man  in  the  mass,  forever  broke 
up  the  ancient  solidarity.  Out  of  the  death  of 
feudalism  came  the  birth  of  democracy.  The  demo- 
cratic individual  was  being  born  politically,  when 
machinery  appeared  to  give  him  a  new  world  to 
conquer.  All  the  inherent  and  attendant  forces  of 
machine-production  conspired  to  intensify  the  inde- 
pendent individuality  of  those  who  exploited  the 
tools  of  production.  Even  the  many  more  who  were 
left  to  work  with  their  bare  hands,  without  either 


92  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

the  material  or  the  machinery  for  producing  their 
own  living,  were  individualized  as  never  before. 
The  serf  was  no  longer  tied  to  the  soil.  Liberty  of 
movement  came  in  for  the  first  time  with  the  world 
market,  and  labor  could  go  where  there  was  the 
greatest  demand  for  it.  The  individual  became  the 
new  unit  of  society. 

No  sooner  had  the  type  of  this  new  individual 
unit  been  fairly  and  firmly  set  than  the  same  forces 
immediately  began  to  put  together  those  who  had 
been  separated  from  their  groups.  The  industrial 
process  of  reintegration  set  in.  The  forces  resident 
in  or  centered  about  machine-production  and  the  sub- 
division of  labor  began  to  assert  their  superiority  to 
the  domination  of  the  very  individuals  who  created 
and  until  recently  controlled  them.  The  tendency 
of  this  new  industrial  society  has  been  more  and 
more  from  individual  independence  to  the  interde- 
pendence of  man  upon  man,  craft  upon  craft,  class 
upon  class,  nation  upon  nation.  Before  the  century 
was  half  over,  industrial  life  swept  away  from  un- 
restricted competition  to  a  combination  of  capital  and 
labor  as  inevitable  and  involuntary  as  the  pull  of 
the  moon  upon  the  tides.  From  the  personal  main- 
tenance of  the  freedom  of  contract,  the  wage-workers 
were  driven  to  the  only  possible  exercise  of  that  right 
by  collective  bargaining.  Politically,  the  trend  has 
been  from  local  autonomy  and  State  rights  to  national 
and  international  consolidation.  Socially,  whole 
racial  populations  have  been  blended  more  and  more 


Industry  and  Religion  93 

in  huge  cosmopolitan,  composite  citizenships.  The 
irresistible  ground  swell  and  tidal  movement  of  the 
present  quarter  century  has  been  away  from  indi- 
vidualism toward  a  new  solidarity. 

Yet  beneath  all  the  overlying  turmoil  and  fric- 
tion, injustice,  and  menace  attending  this  rapid  and 
radical  readjustment,  there  is  certainly  developing 
a  larger  liberty  at  least  for  the  class,  a  rising  standard 
of  living  for  the  mass,  a  stronger  defense  against 
the  aggression  of  one  class  upon  another  and  a  firmer 
basis  and  more  authoritative  power  to  make  and 
maintain  peaceful  and  permanent  settlements  of  in- 
dustrial differences.  More  slowly  but  surely  there 
are  developing  legal  forms  and  sanctions  which  not 
only  make  for  justice  and  peace  between  employers 
and  employees,  but  for  the  recognition  of  the  rights 
and  final  authority  of  that  third  and  greatest  party 
to  every  industrial  interest  and  issue — the  public. 

The  Christian  religion  is  inextricably  identified 
with  these  human  factors  of  the  industrial  problem. 
Its  destiny  is  inevitably  involved  in  these  irresistible 
tendencies  in  our  industrial  democracy.  Not  for  the 
first  time  is  the  power  of  the  Christian  ideal  and 
faith  being  tested  by  its  ability  to  solve  the  problems 
it  has  raised.  For  Christianity  has  ever  intensified, 
if  it  did  not  create,  the  industrial  crises  which  at- 
tended its  birth  and  its  rejuvenescence.  The  Chris- 
tian evangel  has  all  along  held  the  ideal  overhead 
and  the  dynamic  within  the  heart  which  has  inspired 
a  divine  discontent.  Every  now  and  then  the  Gospel 


94  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

strikes  the  earth  under  the  feet  of  the  common  man, 
and  he  rises  up  and  demands  to  be  counted  as  one. 
Old  John  WyclifiVs  categorical  imperative,  "Father 
He  bade  us  all  Him  call,  masters  we  have  none," 
inspired  "Piers  Ploughman,"  the  first  great  labor 
song;  John  Ball,  whose  field  preaching  was  a  decla- 
ration of  rights;  and  Wat  Tyler,  who  led  the 
peasants'  strike.  Many  another  labor  movement  has 
inscribed  no  more  nor  less  upon  its  banners  than 
the  Swabian  peasants  had  upon  theirs :  a  serf,  kneel- 
ing at  the  cross,  with  the  legend,  "Nothing  but  God's 
justice."  The  progress  of  the  democracy  has  often 
halted  in  passing  the  Church  and  listened  at  its 
oracles,  to  hear  whether  it  could  express  Christian 
principles  in  terms  of  industrial  relationship; 
whether  it  would  let  the  worker  be  the  man  its  free 
Gospel  and  its  free  school  have  taught  him  to  know 
himself  to  be. 

Protestant  Christianity  has  from  its  very  birth 
been  persistently  faced  with  the  demand  for  the  eco- 
nomic justice  and  industrial  peace  promised  by  the 
prophets  and  proclaimed  by  the  Christ.  By  culmi- 
nating in  the  correction  of  theological  errors  and 
ecclesiastical  abuses,  the  Eeformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century  must  be  admitted  to  have  fallen  short,  how- 
ever excusably,  of  the  great  moral  and  social  results 
which  would  have  been  its  legitimate  consummation 
if  its  splendid  beginnings  could  have  been  carried 
on  and  out.  For  it  was  made  possible,  more  per- 
haps than  by  anything  else,  by  the  social  discontent 


Industry  and  Religion  95 

of  the  oppressed  peasantry.  Luther's  protest  found 
its  most  fertile  soil  in  those  suffering  from  the  op- 
pressive industrial  conditions  under  which  people  had 
been  robbed  and  beaten  to  the  point  of  revolt.  The 
economic  side  of  the  great  Reformation  is  yet  to  be 
written.  So  far  it  has  received  due  emphasis  in 
the  radical  literature  of  writers  avowedly  inimical 
to  Christianity. 

At  the  rise  of  the  evangelical  movement  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  Wesleys  had  no  sooner  raised 
that  standard  of  reality  in  religion  than  they  found 
themselves  face  to  face  with  this  same  imperative 
industrial  problem.  The  Methodist  chapels  and  class- 
meeting  trained  both  the  leaders  and  the  mass  of 
the  working  people  for  their  trade  union  movement, 
which  was  one  of  the  incidental  and  most  far-reach- 
ing results  of  the  revival  in  England.  The  rise  of 
the  great  middle  classes  to  their  activity  in  social 
reforms  is  due  to  this  same  evangel  which  brought 
the  sunrise  of  a  new  day  out  of  the  leaden  skies 
of  eighteenth  century  England.  Further,  the  rise 
of  the  factory  system  suddenly  put  "the  Christianity 
of  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  test  of  its  supreme 
crisis.  It  was  the  evangel  of  the  Seventh  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury,  of  Frederick  Den i  son  Maurice,  and  of 
Charles  Kingsley,  which,  more  than  the  Duke  of 
Wellington's  battalions,  saved  England  from  the 
revolution  threatened  by  the  Chartist  movement  to 
the  evolution  which  has  sanely  and  surely  developed 


96  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

the  magnificent  municipal  and  social  progress  of 
Great  Britain  in  the  last  quarter  century. 

The  present  crisis  in  industrial  relationship  tests 
the  capacity  of  the  Christianity  of  the  Churches  to 
adapt  itself  to  the  modern  conditions  of  life  and 
marks  the  point  at  which  it  will  either  make  another 
great  advance  or  suffer  a  sharp  decline.  It  must 
find  terms  of  economic  and  industrial  relationship 
in  which  to  express  and  impress  its  sanctions,  if  it 
is  to  survive,  much  more  guide  and  dominate  life 
in  this  industrial  age.  And  our  system  and  methods 
of  industry  must  find  terms  of  religious  spirit  and 
fellowship  in  which  to  justify  their  claim  to  be  forces 
making  for  righteousness  and  for  the  progress  of 
the  race.  This  interdependence  of  religion  and  in- 
dustry states  the  problem  of  finding  common  ground 
on  which  they  make  each  other  possible  and  a  re- 
ligious industrial  life  actual  in  this  age  of  the  world. 

There  are  at  least  three  human  interests  upon 
which  both  industry  and  religion  set  their  value.  At 
these  three  points  the  industrial  and  religious  valu- 
ation must  either  find  a  common  denominator,  or  be 
fatally  exclusive  of  each  other:  In  their  valuation 
of  each  single  life,  in  their  standard  of  living,  in 
the  emphasis  they  lay  upon  union  through  sacrifice 
as  essential  to  progress. 

Upon  each  human  life  religion  has  ever  placed 
a  divine  valuation.  In  both  the  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian faiths  God  identifies  Himself  with  each  single 
self,  by  creating  man  in  His  own  image  and  likeness, 


Industry  and  Religion  97 

and  by  standing  in  between  each  life  and  either  self- 
neglect  or  the  aggression  of  others.  When  the  king 
of  Israel  was  self-convicted  of  blood-guiltiness  in 
sending  a  common  soldier  to  his  death,  he  cried  out, 
as  though  he  had  struck  at  the  very  life  of  God, 
"Against  Thee,  Thee  only,  have  I  sinned."  The 
Roman  who  was  capable  of  coining  the  sentiment, 
"Nothing  that  is  common  to  man  is  foreign  to  me," 
was  also  capable  of  divorcing  his  wife  because  she 
did  not  expose  to  death  the  girl  baby  born  in  his 
absence,  so  disappointed  was  he  that  the  child  was 
not  a  boy.  Yet  at  that  very  time  Christianity  began 
to  invest  every  life  with  such  a  divine  sanctity  that 
the  law  of  every  Christian  nation  has  ever  since 
gotten  in  between  the  parent  and  the  child  not  only, 
but  between  even  the  mother  and  the  unborn  babe. 
In  America  we  put  a  valuation  upon  every  child  so 
great  that  we  can  afford  to  make  the  school  tax  heavy 
rather  than  to  have  any  boy  or  girl  grow  up  un- 
educated. The  right  to  life  is  so  sacred  that  every 
community  in  Christendom  assumes  the  burden  of 
providing  food,  clothing,  and  shelter  to  every  helpless 
person,  no  matter  how  useless  to  self  or  others  such 
an  one  may  be.  More  than  by  any  speech,  symbol, 
or  act  of  man,  the  cross  of  Christ  sets  God's  estimate 
upon  the  value  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child. 
And  it  has  imposed  upon  the  religious  conscience  that 
sense  of  the  worth  of  a  life  which  is  expressed  in 
what  we  call  "the  burden  of  the  soul." 

How,  then,  does  the  industrial  valuation  of  the 
7 


98  The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

same  life  accord  with  the  religious  value  of  the  soul '? 
Our  economists,  indeed,  estimate  each  able-bodied 
workingman's  life  to  be  worth  at  least  two  thousand 
dollars  to  the  working  wealth  of  the  nation.  But 
in  shameless  inconsistency  with  these  estimates  of 
our  religious  ideal  and  economic  valuation  stands  the 
industrial  depreciation  of  the  value  of  a  human  life. 
Let  the  price-mark  on  a  life  be  set  by  the  overwork 
of  women,  with  which  the  courts  are  interfering  to 
protect  the  common  welfare  from  the  deterioration 
of  their  offspring.  Let  the  insatiable  waste  of  child 
labor  be  measured  by  the  instinct  of  self-protection 
which  forces  nations  to  protect  themselves  from  the 
industrial  depletion  of  the  very  stock  of  the  race. 
Let  the  frightful  industrial  casualties  in  America 
sound  the  depths  of  our  own  disregard  of  human 
life  and  safety  by  the  never  published  lists  of  the 
dead  and  wounded,  disabled  and  missing,  which  in 
some  industries  exceed  the  casualties  of  the  deadliest 
battlefields  of  our  worst  wars.  Let  our  conscience- 
less heedlessness  of  the  grievous  burden  imposed  by 
the  bread-winner's  death  be  arraigned  by  our  re- 
fusal to  distribute  that  burden  of  supporting  the 
dependent  families  of  the  slain  or  disabled  workers 
as  it  is  distributed  in  other  lands  between  the  owners 
of  the  industry,  the  taxpayers  of  the  State,  and  the 
wage-earners. 

Now,  what  makes  work-a-day  life  a  tragedy  is 
the  hopelessly  inconsistent  disparagement  between 
the  valuation  which  the  industries  and  the  religion 


Industry  and  Religion  99 

of  the  same  people  put  upon  the  same  life.  The 
claim  of  religious  people  to  love  the  soul  seems  the 
cruelest  hypocrisy  when  identified  with  the  heedless 
carelessness  for  the  very  life  of  the  same  person.  It 
would  seem  that  to  make  good  its  claims  to  bearing 
the  burden  of  souls,  religion  must  find  concrete 
measures  of  industrial  protection  in  which  to  ex- 
press its  care  for  the  lives  of  men.  And  yet  until 
very  recently  the  working  people  of  America  have 
been  left  alone  by  the  influential  constituencies  of 
the  Churches  to  make  their  hard  and  heroic  struggle 
for  self-protection.  First  in  the  field,  hardest  at 
work  has  organized  labor  been  to  protect  the  re- 
ligious and  educational  sanctity  of  each  working 
life,  to  regulate  or  suppress  child  labor,  to  shorten 
the  hours  and  improve  the  conditions  of  women's 
work.  But  the  efforts  of  others  should  not  be  for- 
gotten. The  splendid  initiative  of  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury  in  placing  the  factory  acts  on  the  statute 
books  of  England  two  generations  ago  has  led  men 
and  women  from  all  classes  ever  since,  and  never 
more  than  now,  to  unite  to  protect  and  enhance  the 
value  of  life  in  such  concerted  movements  as  the 
National  Child  Labor  Committee,  the  Consumers' 
League,  the  Visiting  Nurses'  Association,  and  volun- 
tary agencies  to  co-operate  with  factory  inspectors, 
truant  officers,  and  juvenile  courts  in  the  enforce- 
ment of  just  and  humane  legislation.  Thus  the  sanc- 
tions of  religion  and  education  upon  the  value  of  a 
life  are  being  translated  in  terms  economic  and  in- 


100          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

dustrial  by  every  protected  piece  of  machinery  which 
keeps  the  fingers  on  the  hand  and  the  hand  on  the 
arm;  by  all  the  hygienic  and  sanitary  conditions 
provided  for  in  our  shops;  by  all  the  efforts  for  in- 
dustrial insurance;  by  all  the  life-saving  appliances 
and  conditions  on  the  waterways  and  on  the  rail- 
ways of  the  land,  and  wherever  safety  is  in  peril  in 
the  working  world. 

The  standard  of  living  affords  another  common 
ground  on  which  religion  and  industry  are  found  to 
be  interdependent.  In  raising  the  standard  of  liv- 
ing to  be  compatible  with  the  value  of  life,  both  in- 
dustry and  religion  realize  their  ideal.  By  holding 
over  every  one's  head  the  ideal  of  what  a  human 
life  was  meant  and  made  to  be,  religion  lifts  the 
standard  of  that  life,  creates  a  divine  discontent  with 
anything  less  and  lower,  and  stirs  men  to  struggle 
singly  and  together  to  maintain  and  advance  a  rising 
scale  of  living  which  comes  to  be  as  dear  as  life 
itself.  The  response  of  industry  to  this  ideal  of 
religion  is  the  demand  for  the  opportunity  to  earn 
such  a  livelihood  as  will  make  the  realization  of  that 
ideal  possible.  The  struggle  of  working  people  to 
raise  and  maintain  their  standard  of  living  is  due 
to  the  best  that  is  in  them  and  not  to  the  worst. 
"If  this  is  the  kind  of  a  man  or  woman  religion 
and  education  teach  me  to  be/'  the  worker  naturally 
concludes,  "I  should  be  given  the  chance  to  earn 
the  living  of  such  a  man  or  woman."  Interpreted 
in  human  terms,  "the  standard  of  living"  means  the 


Industry  and  Religion  101 

rest  which  the  son  of  a  working  mother  thinks  she 
should  have  in  her  old  age,  the  exemption  which 
his  wife  should  have  from  wage-earning  in  order  to 
mother  his  children,  the  schooling  his  boy  or  girl 
should  get  before  going  out  into  the  working  world. 
The  rising  standards  of  living  are  due  to  the  ideal 
which  religion  has  taught  us  all  to  have  of  manhood 
and  womanhood,  fatherhood  and  motherhood,  wife- 
hood  and  childhood.  Employing  industries,  which 
have  too  long  and  too  widely  united  to  hold  down 
and  retard  the  rise  in  labor's  standard  of  living,  have 
more  and  more  to  their  credit  unselfish  efforts  and 
achievements  in  lifting  the  standards  of  labor's  liveli- 
hood and  opening  to  ever  increasing  multitudes  the 
opportunity  and  means  of  realizing  it.  Both  among 
employers  and  employees  the  struggle  to  achieve  the 
rising  standard  of  living  for  the  class  and  the  mass 
should  be  sanctified  by  religion.  It  should  be  no 
small  part  of  our  personal  and  collective  religious 
aim  and  effort  both  to  protect  our  fellow-men  from 
lowering  the  standard  of  their  living  and  to  help 
them  raise  it,  and  keep  it  rising,  above  a  mere  living 
wage,  as  far  as  the  conditions  of  the  trade  or  craft 
will  allow.  Until  we  thus  translate  our  religious 
love  of  souls  into  our  economic  care  for  selves,  re- 
ligion will  mean  very  little  to  those  who  are  living 
in  an  industrial  age. 

A  third  common  ground  on  which  religion  and 
industry  are  seen  to  be  interdependent  is  defined  by 
the  fact  that  both  have  taught  men  to  sacrifice  in 


102          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

order  to  unite  for  the  common  good.  Have  we  not 
been  teaching,  drilling,  disciplining  our  men,  women, 
and  children,  at  home,  at  school,  and  at  Church,  by 
their  loyalty  to  family,  party,  patriotism,  and  faith, 
to  sacrifice  self  and  stand  together  for  the  common 
good  of  all  or  any  of  them?  Have  we  not  invested 
with  patriotic  and  even  religious  sanctity  those  who 
sacrifice  themselves  for  "their  own"  folk,  fatherland, 
or  faith?  How,  then,  do  these  virtues  suddenly  be- 
come vices,  these  heroes  and  heroines  all  at  once  be- 
come sordid  conspirators  when  they  combine,  stake 
everything  dear  to  each,  risk  all  and  stop  short  of 
the  loss  of  nothing,  in  united  action  to  save  their 
own  or  their  fellow  workers'  standard  of  living? 
They  may  do  so  in  unwise  or  even  unjust  ways, 
but  we  submit  that  what  is  by  common  consent 
considered  wholly  meritorious  in  every  other  sphere 
for  self-sacrifice  can  not  be  wholly  reprehensible  in 
that  of  industrial  relationship,  where  it  is  hardest 
and  costliest  to  exercise  the  virtues  of  altruism. 
What  is  attributed  to  the  very  best  in  men  else- 
where can  not  be  attributed  to  the  very  worst  in 
men  here.  The  "union"  of  laborers  can  not  differ, 
per  se,  morally  and  as  an  economic  necessity,  from 
a  combination  of  capitalists  or  the  communion  of 
members  of  the  same  religious  faith.  If  at  this  age 
of  the  world,  combination  is  necessary  to  success, 
where  is  the  justice  in  forcing  these  competitors  of 
ours  to  do  their  business  with  us  as  though  they 
lived  in  that  former  age  of  the  world  when  each 


Industry  and  Religion  103 

one  could  mind  his  own  business  without  combining 
with  others  ? 

It  looks,  then,  as  though  the  industrial  world 
has  outgrown  our  moral  sense,  as  though  our  ethics 
are  hopelessly  belated.  For  we  seem  to  want  to 
make  our  profits  under  the  modern  method  of  com- 
bining all  available  resources,  while  at  the  same 
time  insisting  that  our  fellow  workers  shall  deal 
with  us  under  the  old,  outworn,  and  discarded  system 
of  individual  industry.  That  is,  we  want  others 
to  do  unto  us  as  we  are  not  yet  willing  to  do  unto 
them.  It  looks  as  though  some  of  us  were  being 
tried  and  found  wanting.  Of  "times  that  try  men's 
souls'y  we  speak  as  though  they  were  to  be  dreaded 
and  yet  belong  to  the  "heroic  age,"  but  when  we  look 
back  upon  them  from  Some  safe  distance  we  are  gen- 
erally forced  to  confess  that  the  "times"  were  not 
more  out  of  joint  than  that  the  "souls" — our  own 
or  others' — needed  to  be  tried. 

These  war  times  in  industry  are  indeed  -to  be 
dreaded,  but,  like  all  great  crises  that  turn  the  course 
of  history  or  personal  experience,  they  too  are  heroic. 
But  the  heroism  should  not  be  confined  to  the  strikes 
and  lockouts  of  the  irrepressible  conflict.  Industrial 
peace  should  have  its  victories  at  the  hand  of  re- 
ligion, no  less  renowned  than  war.  The  cross  and 
its  sacrifice,  if  they  are  to  mean  anything  in  this 
industrial  age,  must  be  translated  by  religion  into 
terms  of  industrial  conciliation,  intercessorial  medi- 
ation, and  sacrificial  service,  which  will  bring  the 


104          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

pact  of  Christ's  own  peace  in  human  brotherhood 
out  of  fratricidal  strife. 

Industry  has  its  cross  as  surely  as  religion. 
There  is  no  way  to  the  crown  for  either  other  than 
the  passion  of  sacrificial  service.  Sacrifice,  not  only 
for  self,  but  for  others,  is  the  only  way  by  which 
either  the  strong  or  the  weak  can  be  crowned  with 
that  equality  of  opportunity  which  is  the  God-given 
right  of  manhood.  Until  industry  takes  up  its  cross 
with  the  self-sacrificing  passion  of  religion,  neither 
labor  nor  capital,  employee  nor  employer,  can  really 
come  to  their  own.  ft  Unless  religion  transforms  its 
cross  into  terms  of  economic  value  and  of  industrial 
relationships,  it  can  never  hold  its  supremacy  over 
human  life  in  an  industrial  age.  They  must  unite 
if  either  is  to  realize  its  ideal  or  function  in  human 
life.  For  they  are  interdependent,  and  only  on  the 
common  ground  of  their  community  of  human  in- 
terests can  they  ever  bring  "the  new  heavens  and 
the  new  earth"  which  God  has  promised  to  man 
through  them,  ll 


CHRISTIANITY  AND  THE  SOCIAL 
SITUATION 

GEOKGE  PECK  ECKMAN,  D.  D., 

Pastor  of  St.  Paul's  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  New 
York  City. 


CHRISTIANITY   AND   THE   SOCIAL   SITU- 
ATION 

LIKE  every  other  vital  organism,  Christianity 
may  be  said  to  possess  a  kind  of  corporate  self- 
consciousness,  which  includes,  not  only  the  concep- 
tion of  its  fundamental  and  permanent  mission,  but 
also  the  conviction  of  its  specific  function  in  any 
particular  and  passing  crisis.  This  feeling  of  the 
body  may  not  always  be  identical  with  the  opinions 
of  certain  individuals  who  belong  to  the  organic 
whole.  Just  as  the  American  nation  has  a  view  of 
its  position  and  duty  respecting  the  progress  of  civi- 
lization which  is  not  shared  by  every  citizen  of  the 
Republic,  so  Christianity  in  its  corporate  capacity 
may  report  itself  as  conscious  of  responsibilities  and 
aspirations  which  do  not  receive  the  unqualified  en- 
dorsement of  all  its  adherents.  Nevertheless,  there 
is  in  every  age  of  the  world  a  dominant  Christian 
sentiment  which  differentiates  the  Church  of  that 
period  from  the  Church  of  any  other  period.  This 
is  Christianity's  current  feeling  about  its  immediate 
obligation — its  program  for  the  day.  The  Christian 
commonwealth  has  moods,  visions,  expectations,  and 

107 


108          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

inspirations   corresponding  to  the   requirements   of 
each  successive  stage  in  the  progress  of  social  evo- 
lution, much  as  men  at  different  periods  of  their 
lives  apprehend  their  personal  relations  to  society 
according  to  the  influences  which  are  operative  in 
childhood,  youth,  manhood,  and  maturity. 
j        There  was  a  time  when  Christianity  regarded  its 
k,first  duty  to  be  the  refutation  of  the  hostile  criti- 
1  cism  which  was  urged  against  its  teachings.     Right 
?  royally  was  that  mission  executed;  and  we  are  the 
Tbeneficiaries  of  the  results  thus  achieved.     There  is 
not  a  trace  of  philosophic  paganism  in  the  twentieth 
century,  or  a  single  fundamental  position  of  mate- 
rialism, which  the  early  protagonists  of  Christianity 
did  not  meet  and  vanquish  centuries  before  we  were 
born;  and  it  is  only  necessary  to  have  recourse  to 
the  writings  of  the  fathers  to  find  weapons  sufficient 
to  annihilate  every  upstart  enemy  of  the  faith.    But 
this  is  not  the  age  of  apologetics. 

There  was  a  time  when  Christianity  felt  its  most 
1  imperative  obligation  to  be  the  extermination  of  those 
1  heresies  which  had  actually  sprung  from  the  mar- 
1  velous  fecundity  of  Christian  doctrine ;  for  the  Bible 
is  the  greatest  provocative  of  intellectual  inquiry  in 
the  whole  realm  of  literature.     Nobly  was  this  work 
of  supplanting  error  with  truth  by  the  use  of  reason 
and  revelation  accomplished  in  the  crisis  which  de- 
manded  it.     But  this   is  not  the   age  of   dogma- 
building. 

There  was  a  time  when  Christianity  felt  that 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         109 

its  immediate  task  was  the  consolidation  and  uni- 
fication of  its  organic  mechanism.  On  the  model  of 
the  Koman  Empire  it  proceeded  to  erect  a  vast  and 
portentous  institution,  which  extended  its  instru- 
ments of  control  throughout  the  governments  of 
the  civilized  world.  But  this  is  not  the  age  of  ec- 
clesiastical imperialism.  The  Roman  conception  of 
the  Church  is  an  anachronism  in  the  twentieth 
century. 

Other  illustrations  of  the  adaptation  of  the 
Church  to  temporary  conditions  will  occur  to  every 
student  of  religious  history,  but  we  are  now  chiefly 
concerned  with  the  feeling  of  Christianity  respect- 
ing the  present  age.  The  Church  is  not  at  this 
moment  so  much  interested  in  dogmas  and  heresies 
and  churchly  machinery  as  with  life  in  all  its  ex- 
pressions, and  specifically  with  community  life  in 
its  social  and  economic  aspects.  It  is  inspired  by 
that  emotion  which  has  been  ascribed  to  its  great 
Founder,  "the  enthusiasm  of  humanity,"  a  passion 
which  has  broken  out  sporadically  in  all  periods  of 
the  Church's  history,  which  manifested  itself  in  the 
philanthropic  work  of  certain  monastic  orders  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  which  has  always  characterized 
the  work  of  those  valorous  souls  who  have  set  them- 
selves to  redress  the  grievances  of  the  depressed  ele- 
ments of  society.  But  ours  is  pre-eminently  the  age 
of  humane  effort  for  social  redemption.  The  cor- 
porate consciousness  of  Christianity  now  reports  it- 
self as  feeling  a  divine  impulsion  to  antagonize  and 


110          The  Social  Application:  of  Religion 

eradicate  every  form  of  social  evil,  and  the  Church 
undertakes  this  beneficent  work  in  perfect  harmony 
with  its  central  and  permanent  object,  which  is  to 
save  the  souls  of  men  from  the  ravages  of  sin.  If 
it  be  said  that  this  ambition  is  simply  a  reflection 
of  the  age  itself — an  effect  of  public  sentiment  re- 
acting upon  the  Christian  Church — it  may  be  truth- 
fully retorted  that  the  humane  spirit  of  the  times 
is  the  product  of  Christian  teaching  more  than  of 
any  other  influence  which  has  ever  moved  upon  the 
forces  of  civilization. 

Very  much  has  been  said  first  and  last  about 
the  universal  brotherhood  of  man.  Poets  have  sung 
its  blessedness  and  prophesied  its  recognition  by  the 
world.  Demagogues  have  harangued  about  it  in  the 
interests  of  their  own  political  ambitions.  The 
friends  of  liberty  have  embodied  it  in  eloquent 
periods.  Infidels  and  scoffers  have  dilated  upon  it 
with  unseemly  enthusiasm,  as  though  it  were  their 
own  special  property;  and  all  preachers  of  righteous- 
ness have  longed  for  the  actualization  of  the 
prophet's  vision  and  the  poet's  dream.  In  our  day 
the  idea  of  human  brotherhood  is  more  fully  de- 
veloped, and  the  prospect  of  convincing  the  world 
that  humanity  is  one  is  brighter  than  ever  before. 
But  when  we  hear  some  social  reformer,  who  ig- 
nores Christianity,  declaiming  on  this  doctrine,  as 
though  it  were  a  discovery  of  the  last  decade,  or 
the  re-discovery  of  principles  hatched  out  in  the 
ferment  of  the  French  Eevolution,  we  are  "false  to 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        111 

historic  accuracy  if  we  do  not  protest  that  to  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ  alone  is  the  world  indebted 
for  the  plainest  and  the  most  persistent  teaching  of 
the  truth  that  all  men  are  equal  and  kin.  The  char- 
acteristic Christian  activity  of  our  times  is  simply 
a  recrudescence  of  the  original  social  teachings  of 
Jesus,  and  their  application  in  a  more  intense  and 
practical  fashion  than  has  been  possible  in  any 
previous  age  of  the  Church.  The  current  situa- 
tion shows  how  opportune  is  this  social  awakening 
of  organized  Christianity. 

It  is  impossible  to  measure  the  ocean  in  a  pint 
cup,  though  its  characteristics  may  be  described  in 
a  few  paragraphs.  It  is  equally  futile  within  the 
compass  of  this  discussion  to  undertake  a  complete 
portrayal  of  the  present  social  crisis.  Yet  its  salient 
features  may  be  roughly  defined.  Like  the  car- 
toonist, we  may  give  effects  by  broad  outlines  and 
huddled  masses  of  color.  Here  are  multitudes  of 
starving,  naked,  vicious  poor  to  be  set  over  against 
colossal  individuals  with  wealth  piled  up  beyond  the 
dreams  of  avarice.  Here  are  grinding,  maddening 
sweatshops  in  one  street,  and  the  glittering  equipages, 
the  spacious  dwellings,  and  the  circumstantial  pomp 
of  the  rich  in  another.  Ten  millions  of  exceedingly 
poor  people,  living  below  the  line  of  physical  effi- 
ciency, fifty  per  cent  of  whom  are  just  skirting  the 
edge  of  actual  distress,  the  sociological  experts  tell 
us,  exist  in  the  richest  land  in  the  world.  Four 
millions  of  persons  in  our  country  are  wholly  de- 


112          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

pendent  upon  some  form  of  public  charity.  More 
than  sixty  thousand  families  on  Manhattan  Island 
were  evicted  from  their  homes  in  a  single  year  on 
account  of  failure  to  pay  their  rent.  One-tenth  of 
all  who  die  each  year  in  the  same  territory  are  buried 
at  public  expense.  Nine  per  cent  of  the  families 
of  the  United  States  own  seventy-one  per  cent  of 
the  wealth  of  the  nation.  Nearly  two  millions  of 
children  under  fifteen  years  of  age  are  engaged  in 
manual  labor  unsuited  to  their  tender  ages.  The 
figures  are  most  impressive.  Here  are  capitalists 
scowling  at  the  laborer,  and  workingmen's  unions 
snarling  and  snapping  at  the  money  power.  Here 
are  the  gigantic  aggregations  of  corporate  enterprise 
controlled  by  single  minds,  over  against  menacing 
combinations  of  laboring  men,  the  ranks  in  both  these 
lines  being  swayed  by  crude  selfishness.  Here  are 
the  sins  of  refined  criminals,  who  are  manipulating 
securities  and  ruining  the  unwary  in  what  is  known 
as  high  finance,  paralleled  on  the  other  side  by  the 
dishonesty  of  the  masses,  who  show  little  respect  for 
the  rights  of  property.  Between  these  conflicting 
interests  stands  the  Church,  fretted  and  worried  by 
all,  seeking  to  make  peace  and  order  for  all,  and 
attaining,  it  must  be  confessed,  only  a  partial  suc- 
cess; for  it  must  be  admitted  that  at  the  moment 
the  Church  has  not  a  firm  grasp  on  either  extreme 
of  society;  and  one  remembers  the  social  designa- 
tion made  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  of  "the  very 
rich,  who  are  apt  to  be  irreligious;  the  very  poor, 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        113 

who  are  apt  to  be  immoral."  That  the  inordinately 
wealthy  should  not  be  very  religious  is  not  surpris- 
ing. These  are  the  persons  who  give  color  to  Car- 
dinal Manning's  definition  of  society  as  "a  con- 
spiracy of  fools,  fashions,  custom,  mutual  flattery, 
eating,  drinking,  and  refined  hardness  of  heart," 
and  who  also  give  support  to  the  declaration  of 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  that,  "Society  is  a  conspiracy 
against  the  manhood  of  every  one  of  its  members." 
The  Church  could,  perhaps,  reconcile  itself  to  the 
alienation  of  the  very  rich,  when  it  recognizes  the 
relative  paucity  of  their  numbers  and  the  natural 
tendency  of  wealth  to  efface  spiritual  appetites;  but 
the  separation  of  manual  workers  from  the  Church 
is  nothing  short  of  appalling,  for  the  Church  can 
no  more  thrive  without  them  than  they  can  flourish 
without  it. 

It  is  useless  to  argue  that  such  an  alienation  of 
wage-workers  in  vast  numbers  has  actually  occurred, 
since  every  careful  student  of  our  times  is  aware 
of  it,  and  any  observer  may  be  convinced  of  it  who 
will  investigate  the  personnel  of  the  average  Chris- 
tian congregation.  Doubtless  it  is  possible  to  find 
certain  localities  where  industrial  pursuits  pre- 
dominate, in  which  the  Church  does  still  exercise 
a  very  large  influence  over  the  working  class  tech- 
nically considered ;  but  the  general  attitude  of  work- 
ingmen,  particularly  those  who  in  such  great  num- 
bers are  identified  with  the  labor  union,  is  con- 
fessedly unfriendly.  In  most  of  our  great  industrial 
8 


114          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

centers  the  bulk  of  the  laboring  people  are  not  in 
fellowship  with  the  Church.  Exception,  perhaps, 
ought  to  be  made  respecting  Roman  Catholic  work- 
ingmen.  The  grasp  of  Rome  upon  childhood,  which 
projects  itself  with  almost  unfailing  strength  into 
the  mature  life  of  those  whom  it  has  trained,  holds 
multitudes  of  workingmen  to  at  least  a  nominal  ad- 
herence to  the  Church.  Some  of  the  more  recent 
expressions  of  the  Roman  Catholic  leaders  on  the 
social  question  have  had  a  tendency  to  lessen  this 
power,  but  Rome  can  be  counted  upon  so  to  adjust 
her  policy  to  current  needs  as  ultimately  to  overcome 
the  disintegrating  influence  of  such  a  mistaken  pro- 
gram. We  are  %  now  speaking  specifically  of  the 
attitude  of  those  workingmen  who  might  be  sup- 
posed by  birth  and' tradition  to  be  within  the  reach 
of  the  Protestant  Church. 

We  are  familiar  with  the  strictures  which  these 
men  pass  upon  the  Church.  They  declare  that 
preachers  and  congregations  are  held  in  complete 
bondage  to  the  present  industrial  system,  that  the 
Church  is  under  the  domination  of  wealth  or  of  the 
middle  class;  and  that  laborers,  even  if  welcomed 
to  divine  service,  have  little  influence  in  shaping  the 
policy  and'  managing  the  affairs  of  the  Church. 
They  say  that  the  Churches  are  doing  comparatively 
little  to  help  them  in  their  struggle  against  what 
they  call  the  aggressions  of  capital,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  catering  to  those  capitalists  who  are  try- 
ing to  subsidize  institutions  of  learning  by  bestowing 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         115 

fortunes  upon  them  which  they  have  wrung  from  the 
people  by  dishonest  means,  and  are  seeking  to  in- 
duce those  colleges  and  universities  to  teach  the  ris- 
ing generation  a  false  system  of  economics  and  a 
cruel  social  regime.  They  confess  that  they  have 
lost  their  belief  in  the  authority  of  religion,  because 
they  contend  that  authority  has  been  employed 
chiefly  to  quiet  the  masses  and  to  make  them  con- 
tent with  their  lot.  They  say  that  the  Church  is 
"the  bulwark  of  the  property-holding  class,  and  the 
theologians  are  distracting  the  minds  of  the  un- 
fortunate by  the  promise  of  prosperity  hereafter." 
They  fancy  that  the  Church  has  prostituted  the 
Christian  religion  to  the  interests  of  the  controlling 
class.  According  to  one  of  their  writers,  "The  cross, 
once  a  symbol  of  suffering,  is  now  a  symbol  of 
slavery." 

Growing  bold  in  their  sense  of  wrongs  suffered, 
and  in  the  consciousness  of  their  own  might,  these 
men  are  now  proposing  to  fight  their  battles  alone. 
They  remind  one  of  the  monk  in  Daudet's  story,  who, 
being  attacked  by  a  bandit,  rolled  up  his  sleeves  and 
offered  this  prayer:  "O  Lord,  all  I  ask  of  Thee  is 
that  Thou  wilt  remain  neutral,  and  I  will  manage 
the  rest."  This  strikes  off  the  general  attitude  of 
organized  labor  toward  the  Church.  Of  course  such 
a  position  is  a  tragic  mistake.  A  recent  writer  on 
labor  movements,  who  is  himself  in  perfect  sympathy 
with  them,  has  stoutly  declared  that  the  chief  want 
of  labor  unions  to-day  is  religion.  John  Graham 


116          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

Brooks  has  called  attention  to  the  fact  that,  in  his 
fantastic  dream  called  "Looking  Backward,"  Edward 
Bellamy  could  find  no  other  way  to  usher  in  his 
social  order  than  by  a  kind  of  revival  of  religion. 
Kingsley  and  Maurice,  in  England,  constantly  de- 
clared that  no  permanent  improvement  of  the  work- 
ingman's  condition  could  be  accomplished  until  his 
own  personal  character  had  been  elevated.  !N"o  better- 
ing of  a  man's  environment  can  bring  him  enduring 
benefit  without  a  corresponding  moral  exaltation 
from  within.  That  this  principle  is  true,  the  best 
sociologists  universally  concede.  Now,  the  Church 
is  unquestionably  set  to  the  task  of  effecting  this 
moral  and  spiritual  uplift;  but  if  the  connection 
between  the  Church,  which  is  the  custodian  of  re- 
ligious teaching,  and  the  masses,  who  are  to  be  taught, 
is  sundered,  the  situation  is  sufficiently  serious  to 
awaken  the  alarm  of  every  thoughtful  Christian. 

"Not  only  is  the  Church  separated  from  an  im- 
mense proportion  of  organized  laborers;  she  is  also 
in  a  large  degree  supplanted  in  the  affections  of 
these  people  by  modern  Socialism.  We  have  not  been 
long  acquainted  in  any  practical  way  with  this  cult 
in  America,  but  its  progress  among  us  during  the 
last  few  years  has  been  very  rapid.  The  number 
of  Socialists  in  the  world  to-day  is  estimated  at 
twenty-five  millions,  and  records  show  that  not  less 
than  eight  millions  of  men  have  voted  a  Socialistic 
ticket,  of  whom  more  than  half  a  million  live  in 
the  United  States.  These  figures  do  not  measure 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         117 

the  extent  of  Socialism's  influence.  Multitudes,  who, 
bound  by  party  ties  which  they  venerate,  do  not 
support  it  at  the  polls,  nevertheless  cherish  its  prin- 
ciples in  their  hearts.  When  the  present  German 
emperor  ascended  his  imperial  throne,  he  said  to 
Bismarck :  "We  will  make  short  work  of  the  Social- 
ist movement.  Leave  that  to  me;  I  shall  win  them 
over  to  my  side  inside  a  year."  Nearly  two  decades 
have  passed  since  then,  and  the  Socialistic  Party  in 
Germany  has  more  than  doubled.  It  is  estimated 
that  fully  one-quarter  of  the  German  people  are  af- 
fected by  its  ideals.  The  status  of  Socialism  in  Ger- 
many represents  the  general  situation  throughout 
Europe,  though  conditions  are  not  so  acute  in  all 
quarters.  The  contemporary  situation  in  Eussia 
speaks  with  tremendous  emphasis.  The  Socialist 
propaganda  has  not  flourished  so  luxuriantly  in 
America,  owing  doubtless  to  our  free  institutions, 
but  it  has  constantly  progressed,  and  its  influence  is 
not  to  be  measured  by  that  vote  of  half  a  million. 
The  whole  brood  of  organized  labor  is  more  or  less 
impregnated  with  its  teachings.  The  sensational 
journals  have  fostered  it,  and  these  are  the  sheets 
which  are  read  in  the  main  by  workingmen.  The 
revolutionary  sentiments  expressed  in  these  papers 
are  cordially  and  perhaps  unthinkingly  endorsed  by 
the  great  army  of  their  readers.  Thousands  of  work- 
ing people  who  could  not  give  a  systematic  account 
of  theoretical  Socialism  are  saturated  with  its  senti- 
ments. 


118          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

But  now  a  strange  and  portentous  transforma- 
tion has  been  occurring  in  Socialism  itself.  As  is 
well  known,  its  modern  revival  commenced  on  a  prac- 
tically atheistical  platform.  The  philosophy  of  Karl 
Marx  is  bald  materialism,  and  the  oft-repeated  say- 
ings of  the  earlier  school  of  Socialists  sufficiently 
indicate  their  hostility  to  religion.  But  a  great 
change  has  come  over  the  tone  of  Socialists  in  this 
respect.  They  confess  that  they  find  religious  con- 
victions intrenched  in  the  deeper  nature  of  man,  and 
that  religion  itself  is  much  larger  than  the  Church 
which  teaches  it.  "It  seems  to  be  fundamental  to 
the  constitution  of  man.  Possibly  he  is  under  a 
delusion,  but  he  is  wedded  to  his  folly."  It  is  a 
race  characteristic  and  can  not  be  ignored.  There- 
fore, an  attempt  is  now  being  made  to  employ  re- 
ligious forms  in  the  service  of  Socialistic  ideals,  and 
Socialism  itself  is  coming  to  assume  the  nature  of 
a  religion.  As  Francis  Peabody  says:  "It  is  not 
enough  to  say  that  Socialism  is  indifferent  to  re- 
ligion; it  undertakes  to  provide  a  substitute  for  re- 
ligion. It  is  a  religion,  so  far  as  religion  is  repre- 
sented by  a  philosophy  of  life  to  which  men  give 
themselves  with  passionate  attachment.  ...  It 
offers  itself  as  an  alternative  to  the  Christian  re- 
ligion." In  this  fact  lies  its  real  danger  at  this 
hour.  Once  a  defiant  enemy,  it  has  now  taken  on 
the  very  livery  of  religion.  Dr.  Thomas  C.  Hall 
says  that  "It  is  in  Socialism  that  organized  Chris- 
tianity has  its  most  serious  and  determined  rival." 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         119 

He  bids  us  remember  "that  Socialism  is  not  simply 
a  political  economy,  nor  yet  even  a  philosophy  of 
society,  nor  a  scheme  of  reform.  Socialism  is  a 
religious  faith,  and  is  being  embodied  in  a  religious 
organization."  Its  adherents  are  possessed  of  an 
immense  enthusiasm.  They  are  captivated  by  a  sub- 
lime idealism  such  as  inspired  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians. They  are  entranced  with  visions  of  a  world 
redeemed  from  selfishness.  They  anticipate  by  faith 
the  consequences  of  a  readjustment  of  the  social  order 
on  a  new  basis.  Their  orators  speak  with  convic- 
tion and  their  congregations  applaud  with  enthusiasm 
principles  which  any  Christian  pulpit  might  utter 
with  honor  to  itself  and  profit  to  its  audience.  They 
sing  lustily  in  praise  of  philanthropy.  Socialism 
now  has  its  hymn-books  and  its  substitutional  forms 
of  worship.  It  spends  thousands  of  dollars  on  litera- 
ture for  free  distribution.  Its  adherents  expect  to 
win.  They*  are  as  confident  as  Christians  ever  were. 
Socialism  is  an  aggressive  competitor  of  the  Church, 
and  its  doctrines  present  such  a  close  resemblance 
to  those  of  Christianity  as  to  make  the  competition 
very  serious.  A  French  writer  has  said,  "If  the 
people  turn  away  from  the  Churches,  it  is  because 
they  possess  in  themselves  the  crude  germs  of  a  re- 
ligion more  grand  than  that  which  the  Churches 
preach."  It  must  be  confessed  that,  if  you  remove 
the  incubus  of  practical  agnosticism  from  Socialism 
and  strip  off  the  barnacles  of  Utopian  impossibilities 
which  have  clustered  about  it,  the  similarity  between 


120          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

the  saner  teachings  of  the  Socialist  and  the  social 
program  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  will  be  remarkable. 
It  would,  therefore,  seem  to  be  the  strategic  need 
of  the  hour  to  establish  some  bond  of  affiliation  be- 
tween the  Christian  Church,  which  is  the  natural 
custodian  of  Christ's  social  teachings,  and  the  vast 
body  of  men  who  look  to  the  Socialistic  propaganda 
for  their  relief.  The  Christian  teacher  knows  that 
what  these  complaining  millions  require  is  a  personal 
alliance  with  Jesus  Christ.  The  working  class  are 
looking  for  an  advocate  who  shall  possess  three  quali- 
fications: First,  he  must  be  so  thoroughly  identi- 
fied with  them  as  a  class  as  to  be  able  to  sympathize 
with  them  and  understand  their  needs.  Second,  he 
must  be  powerful  enough  to  put  into  operation 
forces  which  will  ultimately  remedy  the  evils  under 
which  they  groan.  Third,  he  must  be  wise  enough 
to  give  them  a  philosophy  of  life  which  shall  enable 
them  to  bear  their  burdens  without  fainting  until 
relieved.  Now,  Jesus  answers  these  demands  with 
an  exactitude  which  is  nothing  short  of  the  marvelous. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  carpenter.  It  is  fancied  that 
He  might  have  belonged  to  some  artisan  guild  in 
Nazareth.  He  has  dignified  labor  by  Himself  en- 
gaging in  common  toil.  In  His  human  career  He 
came  into  perfect  sympathy  with  mankind  at  every 
point.  He  enunciated  principles  which  through  the 
centuries  since  His  earthly  sojourn  have  operated  in 
all  civilized  lands  to  mitigate  the  ills  of  the  oppressed 
and  to  alleviate  the  condition  of  the  toiling  class. 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         121 

The  story  of  humane  progress  for  nearly  two  thou- 
sand years  is  virtually  a  record  of  Christ  acquir- 
ing the  mastery  of  society.  Illustrations  of  this  are 
so  numerous  and  so  obvious  that  they  require  no  cita- 
tion here.  Even  Socialistic  leaders  themselves, 
though  hostile  to  the  Church,  are  ready  to  concede 
the  influence  of  Jesus  on  the  development  of  civili- 
zation. Finally,  Jesus  has  given  to  the  world  a 
philosophy  of  human  life  which  makes  any  kind  of 
existence  tolerable  if  lived  apart  from  sin.  He  has 
said  that  "a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance 
of  the  things  which  he  possesseth."  He  has  shown 
the  incalculable  value  of  every  individual  soul.  The 
slave  who  cherishes  His  teachings  may  look  up  under 
the  taskmaster's  lash  and  remember  that  he  is  great 
with  the  greatness  of  God  Himself.  Knowing  the 
workingman  and  his  problems,  sympathizing  with 
him  in  his  distresses,  evidencing  His  power  to  assist 
him  by  what  His  scepter  has  already  accomplished 
in  the  world,  offering  him  a  view  of  human  life 
which  wonderfully  enhances  the  sense  of  self-respect, 
Jesus  is  the  one  supreme  Protagonist  of  the  labor 
class.  The  Socialist  in  his  better  moods  will  ac- 
knowledge this,  while  he  still  protests  that  the  Church 
which  Christ  founded  is  alienated  from  the  class  to 
which  He  and  His  disciples  belonged. 

The  peril  of  the  workingman's  estrangement  from 
the  Church  is  accentuated  by  the  undoubted  hos- 
tility of  many  capitalistic  leaders  toward  organized 
labor.  The  wrongs  under  which  the  artisan  smarts 


122          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

may  be  exaggerated  in  his  thought  by  reason  of  his 
comparison  of  the  little  he  obtains  from  his  toil 
with  the  much  which  comes  to  the  money-power  as 
the  result  of  his  labor.  Yet  his  sense  of  injury  is 
sufficiently  real.  If  it  were  not  for  the  influence  of 
religious  sentiment,  which  exists  to  some  degree  in 
every  man's  breast,  the  enormous  abyss  which 
stretches  between  the  condition  of  the  very  poor  and 
the  estate  of  the  rich  would  so  irritate  the  discon- 
tented masses  as  to  drive  them  to  frenzy  and  impel 
them  to  tear  into  fragments  the  fabric  of  our  social 
order.  Unless  the  Church  can  increase  her  restraint 
upon  the  selfishness  of  those  who  are  in  control  of 
the  sources  of  wealth,  and  harmonize  the  differences 
of  the  extremes  of  society  by  abating  their  cause, 
we  may  look  for  such  a  revolution  as  shall  endanger 
the  very  life  of  our  Eepublic. 

To  avert  this  peril  it  is  imperative  that  a  point 
of  friendly  contact  should  be  established  between  or- 
ganized Christianity  and  the  millions  who  in  the 
present  crisis  are  severed  from  the  Church  chiefly 
through  misunderstanding.  This  demand  can  be 
fully  met  by  the  fearless  proclamation  of  the  social 
teachings  of  Jesus  and  the  scrupulous  application 
of  those  doctrines  to  the  problems  which  vex  our 
social  system. 

One  of  the  most  mischievous  errors  which  has 
crept  into  the  Christian  Church  is  the  blunder  of 
supposing  that  the  religion  of  Christ  consists  wholly 
or  even  chiefly  of  belief  in  a  set  of  doctrines,  and 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         123 

the  performance  of  public  and  private  acts  of  wor- 
ship. There  is  no  need  to  underestimate  the  im- 
portance of  creeds  or  of  religious  observances.  If 
they  are  of  slight  value,  it  is  difficult  to  see  why 
an  order  of  ministers  should  be  created  or  money 
should  be  spent  in  the  erection  of  churches.  But  it 
is  mere  fact  to  declare  that  a  man  could  be  perfectly 
orthodox  in  faith,  and  absolutely  punctilious  in  re- 
ligious observances,  and  still  be  as  far  from  vital 
Christianity  as  a  pagan  who  had  never  heard  the 
name  of  Jesus  or  the  title  of  the  Christian  Church. 
Indeed,  it  is  even  possible  to  conceive  of  a  pagan 
who,  living  under  certain  conditions,  and  following 
certain  moral  and  social  ideals,  would  be  a  better 
Christian  in  the  essentials  of  that  term  than  a 
nominal  adherent  of  Jesus,  whose  orthodoxy  was 
bullet-proof,  but  whose  social  ideas  were  faulty. 
Dean  Stanley  writes:  "It  used  to  be  said  in  the 
wars  between  the  Moors  and  the  Spaniards  that  a 
perfect  character  would  be  the  man  who  had  the 
virtues  of  the  Mussulman  and  the  creed  of  the  Chris- 
tian. But  this  is  exactly  reversing  our  Lord's  doc- 
trine. If  the  virtues  of  the  Arab  were  greater  than 
the  virtues  of  the  Spaniards,  then,  whether  they 
accepted  Christ  in  word  or  not,  it  was  they  who 
were  the  true  believers,  and  it  was  the  Christians 
who  were  the  infidels."  In  a  similar  vein,  and  with 
equal  truth,  it  may  be  maintained  that  Socialists 
whose  teachings  are  in  harmony  with  the  philan- 
thropic ideals  of  Jesus  are  Christians  in  effect,  though 


124          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

they  are  schismatics  from  the  Church,  while  con- 
ventional churchmen  may  be  pagan  in  fact,  though 
Christian  in  creed,  if  they  are  at  variance  with  the 
precepts  of  Christian  humanity.  If  these  seem  to 
be  revolutionary  statements,  it  will  be  well  to  ex- 
amine Christ's  own  words. 

William  Henry  Channing  said  that  Jesus  Christ 
did  not  understand  His  own  religion.  As  a  bald 
statement,  indicating  inferior  intelligence  in  Jesus, 
this  declaration  must  be  repudiated.  But  it  is  easy 
to  believe  that  Jesus  would  not  be  able  to  under- 
stand much  of  what  passes  current  as  His  religion 
in  our  day.  .  He  would  be  puzzled  to  determine  why 
it  clings  to  His  name  since  it  has  abandoned  His 
principles.  It  is  easy  to  discern  some  of  the  things 
which  Jesus  understood  His  religion  to  contain.  One 
day  Christ's  disciples  observed  Him  at  prayer,  and 
said  to  Him,  "Lord  teach  us  to  pray;"  and  He  did 
so  in  words  the  content  of  which  has  sometimes 
been  forgotten.  "After  this  manner,  therefore,  pray 
ye,  Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven,  hallowed  be 
Thy  name,"  and  so  following.  At  the  beginning, 
then,  Jesus  taught  that  God  is  our  Father.  Max 
Miiller  calls  that  doctrine  the  distinctive  peculiarity 
of  the  Christian  religion.  It  is  a  theological  posi- 
tion which  affects  a  great  many  things.  It  interprets 
everything  else  said  about  God  in  the  Bible.  If 
God  is  a  great  Sovereign,  Judge,  and  Law-giver,  it 
is  His  Fatherhood  which  determines  what  kind  of 
King,  Judge,  and  Lawgiver  He  is.  When  one  prays, 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        125 

"Thy  kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done,"  it  is  a 
paternal  kingdom  he  desires  to  see  triumphant.  It 
is  the  will  of  a  Father  he  longs  to  have  executed. 
That  prayer  also  interprets  everything  else  the  Bible 
says  about  man.  If  a  man  is  a  sinner,  destitute 
of  original  righteousness,  lost  and  undone,  an  alien 
and  a  rebel,  we  know  what  kind  of  alien  and  rebel 
he  is.  He  is  a  lost  child,  a  rebellious  son,  a  way- 
ward offspring.  He  is  not  a  homeless  orphan.  God 
is  his  Father.  That  emphasizes  man's  inherent  worth 
as  much  as  it  distinguishes  God's  loving  kindness. 
The  human  stock  has  fearfully  degenerated.  But 
it  is  still  marked  with  the  features  of  a  divine 
paternity. 

When  Rudyard  Kipling  was  supposed  to  be  dy- 
ing in  one  of  our  'New  York  hotels,  he  was  heard 
to  mutter  something  under  his  breath.  His  nurse 
drew  near  to  his  bedside  and  said,  "Do  you  want 
anything?"  "Yes,  I  do,"  he  said;  "I  want  my 
Heavenly  Father;  He  alone  can  care  for  me  now  I" 
It  was  Jesus  who  taught  him  to  say  that,  and  He 
who  has  taught  the  whole  world  that  any  kind  of 
humanity,  in  any  part  of  the  earth,  living  under 
any  condition  whatsoever,  has  as  good  a  right  as 
lludyard  Kipling  to  say,  "I  want  my  Heavenly 
Father." 

Now,  people  who  have  the  same  father  are  cus- 
tomarily called  brothers  and  sisters.  It  is  possible 
to  defy  the  laws  of  consanguinity  and  to  deny  the 
obligations  of  kinship.  But  Jesus  perpetually  pro- 


126          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

tests  against  this  folly,  asserting  at  the  outset  of 
His  teachings  that  God  is  humanity's  Father,  and 
that  humanity  is  one  in  eternal  brotherhood.  It  is 
a  very  grave  question  whether  any  man  is  justified 
in  using  the  Lord's  Prayer  who  will  not  admit  this 
much. 

One  day  a  scribe  came  to  Jesus  and  asked,  "Which 
is  the  first  commandment  of  all?77  The  Master  re- 
plied, "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy 
mind,  and  with  all  thy  strength.  9  This  is  the  first 
commandment ;  and  the  second  is  like  unto  it,  namely, 
this,  'Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself.  There 
is  none*  other  commandment  greater  than  these.' ' 
According  to  Jesus,  the  duties  of  religion  are  com- 
prehended by  these  two  precepts,  of  which  it  has  been 
said  that  the  first  is  theology  and  the  second  is  soci- 
ology, but  of  which  we  may  say  that  the  whole  is 
religion  as  Jesus  understood  it.  It  is  noticeable 
that  the  only  emphasis  placed  upon  the  first  command- 
ment is  that  it  is  mentioned  firsi,  while  Jesus  was 
always  reiterating  in  one  form  or  another  the  never- 
ending  demand  for  love  to  men.  If  it  be  said  that 
he  who  loves  God  supremely  will  inevitably  love  his 
fellow-man,  it  must  be  remembered  that  men  have 
often  professed  to  love  God  with  all  their  hearts 
who  have  felt  an  obvious  contempt  for  humanity; 
and  that  he  who  loves  his  neighbor  as  himself  will 
undoubtedly  love  God  with  a  pure  and  perfect  devo- 
tion. Indeed,  if  one  should  take  Christ's  words 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         127 

alone,  he  would  be  convinced  that  Jesus  placed  more 
weight  upon  loving  humanity  than  upon  loving  God. 
He  referred  to  the  former  far  more  often  than  to 
the  latter.  The  fact  is,  they  are  two  hemispheres  of 
the  same  truth,  and  no  attempt  must  be  made  to 
divorce  them. 

That  there  might  be  no  doubt  concerning  the 
full  extent  of  this  commandment  about  the  treatment 
of  one's  neighbor,  Jesus  used  an  illustration  to  de- 
fine the  term  "neighbor."  He  did  this  for  the  benefit 
of  a  lawyer,  and  no  lawyer  has  ever  had  a  mind 
tortuous  enough  to  misunderstand  it.  It  was  the 
story  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  which  every  one  ad- 
mires, but  which  few  pattern  after.  If  a  Turkish 
bigot  should  nurse  a  wounded  Armenian  or  Bulgarian 
Christian,  putting  him  in  his  own  bed,  and  wash- 
ing his  wounds  with  his  own  hands,  it  would  be 
no  more  wonderful  than  that  this  Samaritan  should 
have  cared  for  the  injured  Jew,  and  paid  his  hotel 
bill.  And  Jesus  said,  in  effect,  "There  's  your  model 
of  righteousness.  Go,  thou,  and  do  likewise."  And 
the  priest  and  the  Levite  who  abandoned  their  own 
countryman,  though  they  were  the  very  quintessence 
of  orthodoxy,  it  is  implied,  were  the  most  unmiti- 
gated heathen. 

One  day  Jesus  stood  up  in  the  synagogue  at 
Nazareth,  where  He  had  been  brought  up,  and  read, 
"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  Me,  because  He  hath 
anointed  Me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  poor;  He 
hath  sent  Me  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach 


128          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

deliverance  to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  sight 
to  the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised, 
to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord."  Then 
He  said,  in  effect :  "That  is  My  map  of  operations. 
That  is  the  outline  of  My  campaign.  That  is  My 
social,  political,  and  religious  platform."  There  is 
not  a  great  deal  of  doctrinal  definition  in  that  procla- 
mation, but  there  is  very  much  of  philanthropic 
promise  and  purpose  in  it.  That  it  would  be  more 
popular  than  a  course  in  systematic  theology,  every- 
body can  see.  But  that  it  contains  more  of  the 
essence  of  religion  than  tons  of  discussion  about 
doctrinal  points  is  what  the  fewest  Christians  in  nine- 
teen centuries  have  been  able  to  perceive.  Yet  this 
is  just  what  Jesus  understood  His  religion  to  mean. 

One  day  a  couple  of  messengers  came  from  John 
the  Baptist,  who  was  in  prison  waiting  for  decapita- 
tion, to  ask  Jesus  whether  He  was  really  the  expected 
Messiah.  The  reply  was  very  significant:  "Go  and 
show  John  again  those  things  which  ye  do  hear  and 
see :  the  blind  receive  their  sight,  and  the  lame  walk ; 
the  lepers  are  cleansed,  and  the  deaf  hear;  the  dead 
are  raised  up,  and  the  poor  have  the  Gospel  preached 
unto  them."  In  other  words,  Jesus  said,  "The  un- 
deniable proof  that  I  am  divine  is  not  that  I  say 
so  or  that  any  one  declares  I  am,  but  that  I  am 
doing  a  divine  work,  I  am  engaged  in  philanthropy." 
That  is  something  of  what  Jesus  understood  His 
religion  to  mean. 

Once  Jesus  was  explaining  the  basis  on  which 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         129 

final  judgment  would  be  pronounced  upon  mankind. 
That  was  a  serious  moment.  It  is  very  significant 
that  on  that  solemn  occasion  Jesus  said  nothing  about 
love  to  God,  or  public  worship,  or  doctrinal  standards. 
The  whole  matter  was  made  to  hinge  on  love  to 
humanity.  Persons  who  have  fed  the  hungry,  clothed 
the  naked,  and  visited  those  who  were  sick  and 
in  prison,  deploy  to  the  right,  in  the  pictorial  repre- 
sentation which  Jesus  draws,  and  those  who  have 
neglected  these  obligations  file  off  to  the  left,  evi- 
dently aware  of  the  perfect  fitness  of  the  recompense 
to  their  deserts.  For  Jesus  says,  "Inasmuch  as  ye 
did,  or  did  not,  do  these  things  to  the  least  of  My 
brethren,  ye  did,  or  did  not,  do  them  to  Me." 
Augustus  Caesar  sat  one  whole  day  each  year  in  a 
public  place  and  received  alms  like  a  common  mendi- 
cant. Sentimentalists  might  fancy  that  an  edifying 
spectacle.  But  Jesus  would  have  us  understand  that 
in  every  destitute  person  He  is  perpetually  standing 
before  the  world  to  receive  help  and  solace.  That 
is  what  He  understood  His  religion  to  mean. 

In  all  these  illustrations  of  Christ's  conception 
of  His  own  religion  we  discover  that  He  places  the 
supreme  emphasis  upon  brotherly  love,  upon  philan- 
thropy, upon  doing  good  to  others.  God  is  a  Father, 
men  are  brothers.  To  love  God  is  to  love  humanity. 
Genuine  love  will  show  itself  in  sympathetic  and  prac- 
tical helpfulness.  That  spirit  will  determine  where 
and  how  we  shall  live  hereafter.  That  is  the  center 
and  core  of  Christ's  religion  as  He  understood  it. 
9 


130          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

We  can  see,  therefore,  how  the  sharp  words  of  Pro- 
fessor Eichard  T.  Ely  can  be  true,  when  he  says  that, 
"A  man  who  claims  to  be  a  Christian,  and  at  the 
same  time  is  not  a  philanthropist,  is  a  liar  and  a 
hypocrite."  And  we  can  realize  how  a  man  with 
such  social  ideas  as  have  been  described  in  terms 
which  Jesus  employed  might  be  a  better  Christian, 
though  he  never  heard  of  Christ,  than  the  man  who 
has  enveloped  himself  with  the  doctrines  of  Chris- 
tianity as  with  a  garment,  but  knows  nothing  of 
practical  love  for  humanity. 

In  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  society  it 
will  be  necessary  to  urge  these  principles  in  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  upon  the  attention  of  all  congregations 
of  Christians,  both  for  the  illumination  of  the  Church 
respecting  its  obligations,  and  for  the  enlightenment 
of  the  alienated  people  who  misunderstand  the  posi- 
tion of  the  Church.  The  social  message  of  Jesus 
bears  distinctly  upon  both  the  accumulation  and  dis- 
tribution of  wealth,  upon  the  duties  as  well  as  the 
rights  of  property-holders,  and  upon  the  mutual  ob- 
ligations of  employer  and  employees  alike.  Future 
generations  will  ask  concerning  any  rich  philan- 
thropist whose  gifts  have  added  distinction  to  his 
name  and  benefits  to  his  fellows,  not  only,  "What 
did  he  do  with  his  money?"  but  also,  "How  and 
where  did  he  get  it  ?" 

The  larger  conquests  of  our  times  seem  to  re- 
quire vast  sums  of  money,  and  the  mad  scramble  for 
wealth  which  characterizes  our  day  is  not  so  much 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        131 

a  mark  of  avarice  as  it  is  a  desire  for  power.  Money 
is  the  apparent  wonder-worker  of  the  age.  Inordi- 
nately rich  men  seem  to  be  demanded  by  the  very 
circumstances  of  our  civilization.  This  is  not  the 
actual  truth.  It  is  in  no  sense  important  that  colos- 
sal fortunes  should  be  reared.  The  man  who  is  push- 
ing through  his  day  with  a  total  disregard  of  the 
higher  interests  of  life,  in  order  that  he  may  accumu- 
late vast  wealth,  may  be  pursuing  his  course  with  a 
view  to  the  ultimate  filling  of  a  great  opportunity 
to  benefit  his  generation,  but  he  is  a  misguided  en- 
thusiast. Enormous  possessions  by  any  man  are  not 
required  for  the  advantage  of  society.  A  whole 
people  lifted  above  the  level  of  grinding  necessity 
would  accomplish  all  that  civilization  requires  with- 
out the  aid  of  a  single  Cro3sus.  The  great  libraries 
which  are  being  scattered  over  our  land  by  the  munifi- 
cence of  our  philanthropic  iron-master,  the  universi- 
ties which  are  being  built  through  the  generosity  of 
great  capitalists,  the  museums  of  art,  of  natural  his- 
tory, and  of  antiquities,  the  hospitals,  alms-houses, 
asylums,  homes  for  the  relief  of  the  unfortunate, 
might  all  be  constructed  and  equipped  with  the 
people's  money  without  the  aid  of  a  single  millionaire. 
The  great  cathedrals,  the  noble  churches,  the  splendid 
memorials  to  departed  greatness  and  genius  which 
fittingly  mark  our  country's  advancement,  could  all 
be  reared  by  the  united  gifts  of  a  competent  people 
without  the  interference  of  one  financial  magnate. 
Let  all  the  people  be  exalted  in  material  conditions, 


132          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

and  let  us  all  be  permeated  by  the  spirit  of  culture 
and  religion,  and  the  monuments  which  their  gen- 
erosity and  devotion  shall  rear  will  reflect  far  greater 
glory  upon  the  commonwealth  than  all  those  separate 
contributions  to  the  beauty  and  order  of  our  times 
which  are  made  by  the  gifts  of  enormously  wealthy 
individuals. 

If  you  were  asked  to  name  the  finest  memorial 
of  Egyptian  greatness  which  survives  the  tooth  of 
time,  you  would  with  perfect  propriety  mention  the 
Pyramids.  As  Rawlinson  says,  "Nothing  more  per- 
fect mechanically  has  ever  been  erected  since  that 
time."  It  is  not  strange  that  travelers  have  invari- 
ably experienced  the  strongest  admiration  for  them. 
The  emotions  of  great  men  from  Herodotus  to 
Napoleon  have  been  stirred  by  the  sight  of  them. 
The  Greeks  and  Romans  regarded  them  as  among 
the  seven  wonders  of  the  world,  and  even  modern 
writers  have  questioned  if  they  could  really  be  the 
work  of  human  hands.  But  these  Pyramids  are  en- 
during memorials  not  only  of  Egypt's  glory  and 
greatness,  but  also  of  her  disgrace  and  shame.  They 
were  erected  at  an  almost  incalculable  cost  of  blood 
and  treasure.  They  are  the  product  in  large  part 
of  the  unrequited  toil  of  slaves.  Thousands  of  human 
lives  were  sacrificed  to  make  them  possible.  Is  it 
altogether  certain  that  future  generations  will  not 
look  upon  some  of  our  most  splendid  institutions 
as  evidences  of  a  similar  disregard  of  the  value  of 
human  life,  when  it  is  remembered  that  many  of  the 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation         133 

most  impressive  structures  of  our  day  were  made 
out  of  the  insufficiently  paid  toil  of  humble  artisans, 
and  were  virtually  dedicated  to  the  glory  of  men 
who  had  gained  the  mastery  of  thousands  of  human 
beings,  while  they  heaped  up  for  themselves  incal- 
culable sums  of  money? 

It  is  a  mark  of  virtue  in  a  man  possessing  power 
that  he  refrains  from  using  it  for  his  selfish  ad- 
vantage, and  it  would  redound  to  the  glory  of 
America,  and  of  the  Christian  Church  which  plays 
so  important  a  part  in  the  life  of  the  people,  if 
men  with  the  ability  to  become  millionaires  would 
have  the  courage  to  content  themselves  with  smaller 
accumulations  in  order  that  less  capable  persons  might 
be  raised  to  a  loftier  level.  It  requires  heroism  for 
one  who  knows  he  could  become  wealthy  to  turn  aside 
from  the  lure  of  fortune  and  devote  himself  to  the 
task  of  uplifting  the  millions  of  his  fellow-beings 
who  do  not  possess  his  abilities,  but  how  noble  is 
such  self-denial!  The  wife  of  Hugh  Price  Hughes 
declared  that  the  greatest  sacrifice  of  her  distin- 
guished husband  was  his  willingness  not  to  become  a 
great  preacher.  He  might  have  attained  this  emi- 
nence, but  it  would  have  been  ^it  the  expense  of  his 
effort  for  the  poor.  How  much  better  than  vast 
accumulations  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men  would  be 
the  strengthening  of  character,  the  diffusion  of 
brotherhood,  and  the  general  elevation  of  society, 
achieved  by  the  devotion  of  men  of  intellect,  not  to 
the  business  of  making  fortunes,  but  to  the  humane 


134         The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

work  of  saving  society!  It  is  the  present  business 
of  the  Church  to  teach  her  wealthy  adherents  the 
beauty  and  power  of  this  ideal. 

Matthew  Arnold  said,  years  ago,  "Our  present 
social  inequality  materializes  the  upper  class,  vul- 
garizes the  middle  class,  and  brutalizes  the  lower 
class."  The  most  apposite  commentary  upon  this 
text  is  the  current  life  of  America.  Organized  Chris- 
tianity has  here  an  immense  task  upon  its  hands. 
The  social  situation  looms  large  and  portentous  be- 
fore the  Church.  It  is  huge  in  bulk  and  wears  a 
frowning  aspect.  The  pulpit  has  been  first  in  giving 
it  cognizance,  and  the  pew  must  be  patient  to  hear 
about  it.  But  this  is  only  the  beginning.  It  may 
be  sentimentally  beautiful,  and  practically  true,  to 
say  that  the  preaching  of  simple  Gospel  will  ulti- 
mately solve  all  the  questions  which  confront  society, 
but  it  is  disgracefully  indolent  and  crassly  ignorant 
to  suppose  that  that  blessed  evangel,  unaccompanied 
by  practical  measures  of  relief  for  existing  evils,  will 
ever  settle  our  current  discords.  This  is  particu- 
larly obvious  when  we  observe  that  those  who  are 
most  responsible  for  present  social  agitation  are  least 
affected  by  the  simple  Gospel,  since  they  hear  it 
most  infrequently.  What  can  the  Church  do  in  the 
present  situation  ?  Its  leaders  can  apply  themselves 
more  seriously  than  they  have  done  to  the  study  of 
the  social  situation;  and  this  must  be  done,  not 
merely  by  the  perusal  of  works  on  sociology,  or  of 
books  which  have  been  written,  either  from  the  stand- 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        135 

point  of  collectivism  or  of  individualism,  many  of 
which  totally,  though  perhaps  unintentionally,  mis- 
represent the  current  social  crisis.  Beyond  and  more 
important  than  all  study  of  social  doctrines  must  be 
a  personal  familiarity  with  the  causes  of  the  present 
social  contention,  obtained  from  an  actual  observation 
at  close  range  of  the  conditions  in  our  social  organ- 
ism. In  all  our  theological  seminaries  there  ought 
to  be  a  department  of  practical  or  applied  sociology, 
and  connected  with  this  department  there  should  be 
a  social  or  religious  settlement  in  some  adjacent 
city.  Our  ministers  themselves  should,  as  far  as 
possible,  secure  a  personal  point  of  contact  between 
themselves  and  the  working  people.  They  should 
know  how  they  live ;  they  should  acquaint  themselves 
with  the  peculiar  limitations  of  their  lives;  they 
should  ascertain  their  particular  temptations;  they 
should  correct  their  misapprehensions  regarding  the 
real  attitude  of  the  Church;  they  should  carry  back 
to  their  congregations  the  knowledge  thus  acquired, 
and  they  should  apply  it  fearlessly  in  their  social 
teachings  from  the  pulpit.  Every  public  leader  ought 
to  be  broad-minded  enough  to  divest  himself  of  any 
personal  irritation  which  he  may  feel  concerning  the 
attitude  of  working  people  toward  the  Church,  and 
discuss  the  subject  of  industrial  reform  on  the  basis 
of  its  fundamental  principles.  One  may  be  exas- 
perated at  the  disposition  of  the  laboring  people  in 
our  times  to  do  as  little  work  as  possible,  and  to 
require  for  that  service  the  largest  compensation 


136          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

which  can  be  wrung  from  the  unwilling  public.  One 
may  feel  that  in  the  present  agitation  organized  labor 
is  showing  a  desire  to  wield  the  terrors  of  despotism 
in  as  cruel  a  fashion  as  was  ever  manifested  by  the 
most  soulless  corporation.  Nevertheless,  he  ought  in 
the  spirit  of  his  Master  to  treat  the  general  situation 
with  statesmanlike  impartiality.  The  social  teachings 
of  Jesus  really  constitute  one  of  the  largest  elements 
in  the  legitimate  utterances  of  the  pulpit,  and  are 
so  plain  and  so  widely  applicable  that  no  student 
of  the  ~New  Testament  need  be  at  loss  concerning 
their  meaning.  Such  a  study  will  disclose  the  utter 
folly  of  indiscriminate  assaults  upon  capital,  em- 
ployers, corporations,  and  trusts,  as  well  as  the 
wickedness  of  inconsiderate  attacks  upon  organized 
labor.  The  modern  preacher  needs  to  ask  divine  help 
to  save  him  from  paroxysms  of  passion  on  either 
side  of  this  great  question.  A  cool  analysis  of  the 
situation,  a  thoughtful  exposition  of  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  Christ  as  applied  to  both  employer  and  em- 
ploye, a  constant  proclamation  of  Christian  ideals 
to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  present  conflict — 
these  are  the  indispensable  requisites  of  a  sane  and 
successful  ministry  in  these  exacting  times. 

At  all  hazards,  the  Church  must  throw  herself 
into  the  current  social  agitation,  not  as  a  reluctant 
laggard,  but  as  the  informing  genius  and  the  con- 
trolling mind  of  the  movement  which  she  has  really 
inspired  by  her  teachings.  She  must  avail  herself  of 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        137 

the  temper  of  the  times.  This  is  an  age  of  great 
opulence,  but  also  of  impressive  economies.  Science 
has  taught  us  how  to  extract  wealth  from  by-products 
which  formerly  were  regarded  as  worthless.  We  find 
fortunes  in  culm-piles,  and  princely  riches  in  scrap- 
heaps.  We  are  making  a  greater  number  of  useful 
articles  from  petroleum  than  our  Oriental  neighbors 
get  out  of  the  palm-tree.  We  are  learning  each  day 
new  and  cheaper  processes  of  utilization.  We  are 
availing  ourselves  of  natural  forces  in  every  possible 
way.  We  are  laying  hold  upon  every  ounce  of  energy 
we  can  discover.  We  are  trying  to  increase  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  human  body  by  feeding  man  with  the 
most  nutritive  and  energy-producing  foods  we  can 
devise.  We  are  practicing  physical  culture  and  ex- 
perimenting with  all  kinds  of  psychological  artifices 
in  order  to  conserve  the  forces  of  the  human  animal. 
All  this  is  typical  of  the  prevalent  mood  of  society 
to  increase  its  power.  We  are  striving  to  redeem 
the  waste  of  society  by  making  the  utmost  of  the 
feeble  and  the  incompetent.  Society  is  preparing  to 
bear  on  its  bosom  the  incapable  until  they  become 
capable.  This  spirit  of  the  age  is  interfering  with 
the  evolutionary  process.  It  is  antagonizing  the 
law  of  the  "survival  of  the  fittest."  It  is  insisting 
upon  the  survival  of  the  unfit,  and  it  does  this  with 
the  consciousness  that  the  social  organism  will  ulti- 
mately reap  an  incalculable  benefit.  To  be  sure,  there 
is  a  school  of  philosophers  teaching  a  contrary  doc- 


138          The  Social  Application  of  Religion 

trine.  They  are  insisting  that  the  deformed,  the  de- 
fective, and  the  diseased  shall  be  ruthlessly  extermi- 
nated. This  would  mean  the  annihilation  of  the  in- 
corrigibly criminal  and  vicious  class.  But  a  society 
pervaded  by  the  humane  spirit  of  our  times  shudders 
at  such  a  remedy,  whether  applied  to  the  redress  of 
physical  or  of  social  ills.  An  intelligent  woman 
asked  the  other  day  if  the  Spartan  method  of  ex- 
posing the  weak  and  incompetent  to  death  would  not, 
after  all,  produce  in  the  long  run  a  sturdier  and 
worthier  race  than  the  method  of  our  philanthropic 
age.  Unquestionably  we  should  by  this  means  secure 
a  brood  of  Titans,  with  muscles  of  brass  and  sinews 
of  steel,  great  portentous  figures,  with  brains  and  mag- 
nificent as  Milton's  "Lucifer,"  and  possessed  of  wills 
as  diabolic,  men  of  intellectual  prodigiousness,  but  as 
cold  and  unfeeling  as  Mont  Blanc;  magnificent 
brutes,  ramping  over  the  earth,  building  colossal 
monuments  to  power  and  selfishness,  making  a  world 
in  which  poetry  would  suffocate,  art  would  be  devital- 
ized, music  would  be  starved  into  silence,  its  strings 
all  broken  by  violence ;  eloquence  would  be  quenched, 
religion  frozen  to  death,  and,  the  graces  of  civiliza- 
tion being  obliterated,  life  would  be  an  unspeakable 
calamity.  The  spirit  of  our  times  will  not  tolerate 
such  a  catastrophe.  The  Church  of  our  times  must 
prophesy  and  produce  a  golden  era  of  kindliness  and 
love,  and  by  every  practical  agency  labor  to  show 
itself,  not  merely  in  sympathy  with  the  temper  of 


Christianity  and  the  Social  Situation        139 

the  age,  but  eager  to  lead  the  hosts  of  men  as  rapidly 
as  possible  to  the  fulfillment  of  humanity's  dream  of 
universal  peace,  saying,  with  a  modern  poet : 

"  We  live  to  hail  the  season 

By  gifted  minds  foretold, 
When  man  shall  live  by  reason, 

And  not  alone  for  gold. 
When  man  to  man  united, 
And  every  wrong  thing  righted, 
The  whole  world  shall  be  lighted 

As  Eden  was  of  old." 


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